How North Korea Infiltrated American Companies With Fake Tech Workers

For the past few months, The Wall Street Journal’s Bob McMillan has been writing a series of stories on fake North Korean workers who have infiltrated American companies. In this episode, we break the whole situation down with McMillan, who is a longtime friend and a top-notch security reporter.

The short of the tale is this: North Koreans hop on LinkedIn and other job sites and pose as American remote workers looking for gigs. Once they get hired, the North Koreans then recruit Americans to help them deal with some of the job mechanics like submitting tax paperwork and running company laptops from inside the US.

McMillan has found some Americans who are managing dozens of laptops at their homes on behalf of these North Korean workers. Each morning, the American patsy wakes up, turns the laptops on, and then logs their North Korean workers into their jobs. It’s a practice now known at laptop farming.

The North Koreans tend to be pretty good workers! That is until they start siphoning off money and intellectual property for the Great Leader.

Last month, Arizona resident Christina Marie Chapman pled guilty to wire fraud and other crimes linked to this scheme. Per the Department of Justice, Chapman “was sentenced today to 102 months in prison for her role in a fraudulent scheme that assisted North Korean Information Technology (IT) workers posing as U.S. citizens and residents with obtaining remote IT positions at more than 300 U.S. companies. The scheme generated more than $17 million in illicit revenue for Chapman and for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea).”

All told, the DoJ reckons North Korea has pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars from its network of laptop farmers. McMillan writes about it all here.

If you’re an employer on the lookout for one of these fake remote workers, you’ll want to scan for Kevins in your organization who are really into the Minions. We explain in the episode - promise.

Enjoy!

The Core Memory podcast is made possible by the genius investors at E1 Ventures. We’re not sure if E1 is into the Minions or not, but they are into investing in great companies.