A U.S. federal courtroom has sentenced a Ukrainian man to 5 years in jail for his half in a long-running id theft operation that helped abroad North Korean employees acquire fraudulent employment at dozens of U.S. firms.
U.S. prosecutors brought charges in 2024 towards Oleksandr Didenko, 29, a resident of Kyiv, for organising North Koreans with stolen identities of U.S. residents to get employed and earn a wage. Underneath this scheme, the employees’ earnings had been funneled again to Pyongyang, which the regime used to fund its internationally sanctioned nuclear weapons program.
That is the most recent in a string of latest convictions of people concerned in facilitating ongoing North Korean so-called “IT employee” schemes. Safety researchers have described North Korean employees as a “triple risk” to U.S. and Western companies, as they violate U.S. sanctions, all of the whereas enabling North Koreans to steal delicate firm knowledge, after which later extort these sufferer firms into not publicly releasing company secrets and techniques.
Prosecutors stated Didenko ran a web site known as Upworksell, which allowed folks working abroad, together with North Koreans, to purchase or lease stolen identities for gaining employment with U.S. corporations. Didenko dealt with greater than 870 stolen identities, per the Justice Division.
The FBI seized Upworksell in 2024 and diverted its visitors to its personal servers. Polish authorities arrested Didenko, who was then extradited to the U.S. and later pleaded responsible.
In a statement this week, the U.S. Division of Justice stated Didenko additionally paid folks to obtain and host computer systems at their houses in California, Tennessee, and Virginia. These “laptop computer farms” are rooms containing racks of open laptops, permitting North Koreans to remotely carry out their work as in the event that they had been bodily in the USA.
Safety big CrowdStrike stated final yr that it has seen a pointy rise within the variety of North Korean employees infiltrating firms, usually as distant builders or different technical software program engineering jobs. The scheme is amongst many who the North Korean regime makes use of to complement itself, whereas unable to make use of the worldwide monetary system, due to worldwide sanctions.
North Koreans are additionally recognized to impersonate recruiters and VCs in efforts to trick unsuspecting high-profile and high-net-worth victims into granting entry to their computer systems, together with crypto.
