Two U.S. citizens were sentenced to seven and a half years and nine years in prison for their roles in a scheme to help the North Korean government place remote IT workers in American companies.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the sentencing of Kejia Wang and Zhenxing Wang, both New Jersey residents. The two were accused of providing infrastructure for the fraudulent scheme, in particular for running or managing so-called “laptop farms” inside the U.S., which allowed North Koreans to connect to the laptops and appear like they were living and working in the country.
The scheme netted North Korea around $5 million. It also involved co-conspirators stealing the identities of more than 80 Americans and obtaining work at more than 100 U.S. corporations, including some Fortune 500 companies, according to the DOJ. That also allowed North Korean IT workers not only to get a salary, but also in some cases steal trade secrets and source code, the Justice Department said.
“The ruse placed North Korean IT workers on the payrolls of unwitting U.S. companies and in U.S. computer systems, thereby harming our national security,” John A. Eisenberg, the DOJ’s assistant attorney general for National Security, was quoted as saying in the announcement.
Prosecutors said that between 2021 and 2024, working with co-conspirators, Kejia oversaw the operation of laptop farms made of hundreds of computers, while Zhenxing hosted laptops at his home. The two also created shell companies with financial accounts linked to the fake IT workers to funnel payments amounting to millions of dollars, which were later transferred overseas. “In exchange for their services, Kejia Wang, Zhenx …