https://www.wsj.com/business/north-korea-remote-jobs-e4daa727?mod=hp_lead_pos7
North Korea Infiltrates U.S. Remote Jobs—With the Help of Everyday Americans
A LinkedIn message drew a former waitress in Minnesota into a type of intricate scam involving illegal paychecks and stolen data
By Robert McMillan and
Dustin Volz, The Wall Street Journal, May 27, 2025
…
Yet in reality the 50-year-old was the operator of a “laptop farm,” filling her home with computers that allowed North Koreans to take jobs as U.S. tech workers and illegally collect $17.1 million in paychecks from more than 300 American companies, according to federal prosecutors…People like Chapman typically operate dozens of laptops meant to be used by legitimate remote workers living in the U.S.
What the employers—and often the farmers themselves—don’t realize is that the workers are North Koreans living abroad but using stolen U.S. identities. Once they get a job, they coordinate with someone like Chapman who can provide some American cover—accepting deliveries of the computer, setting up the online connections and helping facilitate paychecks. Meanwhile the North Koreans log into the laptops from overseas every day through remote-access software…
The Federal Bureau of Investigation says the scam more broadly involves thousands of North Korean workers and brings hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the country. “That’s a material percentage of their economy,” said Gregory Austin, a section chief with the FBI.
With international sanctions freezing money flows, North Korea has grown creative in its quest for cash. North Korean hackers have stolen more than $6 billion in cryptocurrency, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis… [end quote]
The workers sometimes appear to steal data for espionage or to use as ransom… One program allowed them to spy on Zoom meetings. Others could be used to download sensitive data without being detected…
One of the North Koreans’ most remarkable feats is the way they leverage gig workers to get around almost any controls corporations can put up to detect them… [end quote]
The article describes an American woman who operated a laptop farm, was caught by the FBI and now faces years in prison.
Doing any kind of business with North Korea is illegal. This shows how ingenious the NKs are in getting help circumventing the sanctions.
Wendy