A woman from Arizona is accused of helping 300 North Koreans get IT jobs that they could do from home.
Arizona lady allegedly assisted North Koreans in obtaining remote IT positions at 300 businesses
A woman from Arizona is being accused of helping North Koreans get IT jobs at Fortune 500 companies in the US to raise millions of dollars for their ballistic missile program.
Federal authorities said in an indictment made public Thursday that Christina Marie Chapman, 49, of Litchfield Park, Arizona, raised $6.8 million for the plan. Chapman is said to have given the money to North Korea’s Munitions Industry Department. This department is in charge of important parts of North Korea’s weapons program, such as making ballistic missiles.
As part of the alleged plan, Chapman and his partners stole the names of more than 60 US citizens and used their personal information to help North Koreans get IT jobs at more than 300 US companies.
Part of the alleged plot was that Chapman ran a “laptop farm” at one of her homes to make it look like the North Korean IT staff were working from inside the US. The laptops were provided by the bosses. By using VPNs and proxies, the workers from other countries made it look like they were joining from IP addresses in the US. Prosecutors say Chapman also got cash from workers at her home.
Federal authorities said that Chapman and three North Korean IT workers—going by the names Jiho Han, Chunji Jin, Haoran Xu, and others—had been planning a way to work from home since at least 2020. According to the prosecutors, someone sent Chapman a message on LinkedIn in March of that year and asked her to “be the US face” of their business. From August to November 2022, the North Korean IT workers are said to have put together online guides and other materials to teach other North Koreans how to make good cover letters and resumes and fake US Permanent Resident Cards.
The alleged scheme had the foreign workers create “fictitious personas and online profiles to match the job requirements” and send fake papers to the Homeland Security Department as part of a check to see if they were eligible for work. Chapman is also said to have talked with other criminals about sending the money they made from their work to other people.
Nicole Argentieri, head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, said, “The charges in this case should be a wake-up call for American companies and government agencies that hire remote IT workers.” “These crimes helped the North Korean government because they brought in money and, in some cases, proprietary information that the criminals stole.”
Along with the indictment, a criminal case accused a Ukrainian guy of running a similar plan over several years. Oleksandr Didenko, who is 27 years old and from Kyiv, Ukraine, is said to have helped people in North Korea “market” themselves as remote IT workers.
Chapman was caught on Wednesday. It wasn’t clear right away when she or Didenko were going to be in court for the first time. Chapman could spend up to 97.5 years in jail if he is found guilty, and Didenko could spend up to 67.5 years.
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