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US arrests Arizona woman for conniving with North Korean workers to infiltrate 300 U.S. companies for online tech jobs
A woman from Arizona took part in a plot to assist North Korean IT professionals in impersonating Americans so they could apply for remote jobs at American businesses according to the US authorities.
Over 300 American businesses, including Fortune 500 organisations and banks, were infiltrated as part of the plot, which sought to steal money for North Korea in defiance of international sanctions as per the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ).
Federal prosecutors have charged Chapman, the three employees, and Oleksandr Didenko, a 27-year-old Ukrainian, in connection with the plan.
The manager of the three workers is listed as an unindicted co-conspirator. The manager went by the identities Zhonghua and Venechor S.
“These individuals engaged in a scheme that enabled Han, Jin, and Xu to obtain illicit telework employment with U.S. companies using false identities belonging to more than 60 real U.S. persons. The illicit scheme generated at least $6.8 million for the DPRK,” the State Department said.
The scheme “impacted more than 300 U.S. companies, caused false information to be conveyed to the Department of Homeland Security on more than 100 occasions, created false tax liabilities for more than 35 U.S. persons,” the DOJ said.
A reward of up to $5 million has been offered by the U.S. government through the State Department’s Rewards for Justice programme for information about the endeavour, specifically involving three North Koreans going by the names Jiho Han, Chunji Jin, and Haoran Xu, as well as their manager, Zhonghua.
Indications are that should the North Koreans be apprehended in the United States, their maximum sentence would be 20 years in prison.
According to the DoJ, Didenko was charged with fabricating accounts on American IT job search engines and selling them to foreign IT professionals, some of whom he thought to be North Koreans. It stated that Chapman collaborated with foreign IT specialists who were employing Didenko’s services.
The Justice Department confiscated Didenko’s website, upworksell.com, on Thursday, according to the statement. We earlier reported that the US has cancelled some licences that let businesses send products, such as processors, to Chinese company, Huawei Technologies, in its latest efforts to curb China’s tech power.