US offers $5 million reward to stop North Koreans from spying on US IT jobs

The United States is offering rewards of up to $5 million for information that will help prevent a group of North Koreans from obtaining remote IT jobs at U.S. companies.

The State Department announced the award today as federal prosecutors indicted an Arizona woman, Christina Chapman, 49, for allegedly helping North Koreans find jobs as software developers and remote applications from October 2020 to October 2023.

The North Koreans – named Jiho Han, Chunji Jin, Haoran Xu and Zhonghua – landed remote jobs at various American companies using the identities belonging to more than 60 real American people.

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“They also attempted – but failed – to obtain similar employment at two US government agencies,” the State Department added. The three North Koreans also reportedly have ties to the country’s Department of Munitions Industry, which oversees ballistic missile development and weapons production.

The project proved lucrative enough for the group to generate at least $6.8 million for North Korea, which faces tough sanctions from the U.S. and Western governments over its nuclear weapons testing. The United States added that the Arizona woman, Chapman, allegedly played a key role in providing the North Koreans with valid identity information from real Americans and even laundering their earnings with American companies.

“She also received and hosted laptop computers given to IT workers by U.S. employers to make it appear that the foreign workers were in the United States and helped the workers connect remotely daily to the computer networks of U.S. companies.” » said the State Department.

Federal investigators arrested Chapman on Wednesday in Litchfield Park, Arizona. She faces a maximum sentence of 97.5 years if convicted of all charges.

Anyone with information on “Jiho Han, Haoran Xu, Chunji Jin, Zhonghua, associated persons or entities, or their revenue-generating and money laundering activities” is encouraged to submit it via Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp or the Tor browser.

The United States fears that this project helped generate funds for the North Korean government and its weapons programs. In October, the FBI and Justice Department warned of the threat, saying they had seized 17 websites that North Korea had operated to trick U.S. and foreign companies into paying for remote computing services.

“The charges in the Chapman case should be a wake-up call to U.S. businesses and government agencies that employ remote IT workers,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney General Nicole Argentieri. “These crimes benefited the North Korean government, providing it with a source of revenue and, in some cases, proprietary information stolen by the co-conspirators.”

In connection with the alleged crimes, federal prosecutors also charged a 27-year-old Ukrainian man, Oleksandr Didenko, with allegedly creating fake accounts on independent IT employment platforms and selling access to them, including to North -Koreans.

“Didenko ran ‘UpWorkSell,’ which used a publicly accessible website to advertise the ability for remote IT workers to purchase or rent accounts using identities other than their own on various platforms,” ​​added the Ministry of Justice. “The UpWorkSell website also advertised “credit card rentals” in the European Union and the United States, mobile phone SIM card rentals, and the ability to purchase or rent accounts from credit card issuers. online money services located in the United States and abroad.

The United States has since seized UpWorkSell’s domain. European police also arrested Didenko while he was in Poland. The United States is currently seeking his extradition.