ROCKET MAN IS MAKING BANK!!!
Yes, this is really happening.
The Justice Department on Thursday announced the arrests of three people in a complex stolen identity scheme that officials say generates enormous proceeds for the North Korean government, including for its weapons program.
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The scheme involves thousands of North Korean information technology workers who prosecutors say are dispatched by the government to live abroad and who rely on the stolen identities of Americans to obtain remote employment at U.S.-based Fortune 500 companies, jobs that give them access to sensitive corporate data and lucrative paychecks.
The fraud is a way for heavily sanctioned North Korea, which is cut off from the U.S. financial system, to take advantage of a 'toxic brew' of converging factors, including high-tech labor shortage in the U.S. and the proliferation of remote telework, Marshall Miller, the Justice Department's principal associate deputy attorney general, said in an interview.
The elaborate scam, according to the Justice Department, has generated more than $6.8 million for these workers. The workers are based outside of the US, but connect to "laptop farms" inside the US, which make it seem like they're working from inside the country.
The scam has affected at least 300 companies and the Justice Department has arrested three people in connection to it.
The first arrest was an Arizona woman, Christina Marie Chapman, who reportedly worked as a middleman, connecting the North Koreans to companies. The companies would then send laptops to her address and she would set them up for the North Koreans to use remotely.
According to the indictment, Chapman ran more than one 'laptop farm' where U.S. companies sent computers and paychecks to IT workers they did not realize were overseas.
Prosecutors say she made money by charging a fee to transfer funds for the commie workers.
The other two defendants include a Ukrainian man, Oleksandr Didenko, who prosecutors say created fake accounts at job search platforms and was arrested in Poland last week, and a Vietnamese national, Minh Phuong Vong, who was arrested Thursday in Maryland on charges of fraudulently obtaining a job at a U.S. company that was actually performed by remote workers who posed as him and were based overseas.
So while we've got the FBI going after literal great-grandmas for being in the Capitol on January 6th, this elaborate scam which funnels money to the North Korean government and funds their weapons program has been happening right under our noses.
Makes you wonder if maybe we got our priorities mixed up, huh?
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