North Koreans charged in $88 million identity theft, extortion case

The Department of Justice accused 14 North Korean nationals of conspiring to use false identities to get IT jobs with U.S. companies and siphon money back to their home country, in violation of U.S. sanctions.

The indictment, filed Wednesday in Missouri federal court, alleged that the conspiracy generated at least $88 million between April 2017 and March 2023.

All 14 defendants are charged with conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as well as conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering and identity theft. Eight of the conspirators are also charged with aggravated identity theft.

The conspirators each face up to 27 years in prison if convicted, the DOJ said. All 14 are listed as “Wanted by the FBI.”

In some cases, they boosted their earnings by stealing sensitive company information and forcing employers to make extortion payments to prevent its release, the DOJ said.

To hide their identities from U.S. employers, the conspirators applied for jobs using stolen identities belonging to Americans, prosecutors said. They also allegedly paid Americans to attend job interviews and work meetings remotely under fake identities, and they registered web domains and designed fake websites to trick prospective employers.

Some of the websites “should have aroused suspicions” about the candidates, the DOJ said in a press release.

For instance, some of the sites contained garbled nonsense, such as, “Nor, moreover, is there anyone who loves pain because it is pain, pursues it, wants to gain it, but,” the government said.

The conspirators allegedly worked for two North Korea-controlled companies, Yanbian Silverstar and Volasys Silverstar, which are respectively based in China and Russia. The U.S. Treasury Department has previously sanctioned both companies.

The State Department said Thursday it is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information about the conspirators and others associated with the two “North Korean front companies.”

The two companies have employed at least 130 workers, but there are many more working toward the same goal of skirting sanctions to generate revenue for the country’s ruling regime, the DOJ said.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Ashley Johnson, special agent in charge of the FBI’s St. Louis field office, said of the case unveiled Thursday.

“The government of North Korea has trained and deployed thousands of IT workers to perpetrate this same scheme against U.S. companies every day,” Johnson said.

“To prop up its brutal regime, the North Korean government directs IT workers to gain employment through fraud, steal sensitive information from U.S. companies, and siphon money back to the DPRK,” deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in the press release.

“This indictment of 14 North Korean nationals exposes their alleged sanctions evasion and should serve as a warning to companies around the globe — be on alert for this malicious activity by the DPRK regime,” Monaco said.