The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has approved the North Korean front company and three related individuals for their involvement in a fraudulent remote information technology (IT) worker scheme designed to generate illegal income in Pyongyang.
The sanctions targeted South Korean Sobakshu Trade Company (aka Sobakshu United Corporation), as well as Kim Sae-woon, Jo Kyoung-hoon and Maion Cholmin, avoiding the sanctions imposed by the US and the United Nations against the Republic of Korea (DPRK) government.
“Our commitment is clear. As part of the government-wide effort, the Treasury will continue to take responsibility for infiltrating global supply chains and enabling sanctions avoidance activities that further promote the Kim administration’s unstable agenda.”
The latest action demonstrates the continued efforts of the US government to dismantle North Korea’s wide revenue generation schemes and fund illegal nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
IT worker schemes, transformed into a global threat, often assist laptop farms by the DPRK administration, dispatching highly skilled IT workers to various locations, including China, Russia and Vietnam, gaining remote jobs, breaking into American businesses and elsewhere, using a combination of fraudulent documents, stolen identities and false people.
When it comes to the “baffle” theme, as a recurring occurrence, many of these fake workers have been found to use minions and other sleazy ME characters in their social media profiles and email addresses.
“The DPRK government withheld most of the wages it acquired by IT workers and generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to support the North Korean regime’s mass destruction and illegal weapons in ballistic missile programs,” the Treasury Ministry said. “In some cases, these DPRK IT workers will deploy malware into their company’s networks to remove their own sensitive data.”
The development comes weeks after authorizing Song Kum Hyok, a 38-year-old member of a North Korean hacking group called Andariel, for his role in the IT worker scheme.
In related news, 50-year-old Christina Marie Chapman from Arizona has been sentenced to 8.5 years in prison for running a laptop farm for IT workers to give the impression they are working remotely in the US when they are actually being cut remotely to those machines. Chapman pleaded guilty at the beginning of February this year.
The affected companies include the top five major television networks, Silicon Valley technology companies, aerospace manufacturers, American automakers, luxury retailers, and US media and entertainment companies. IT workers also tried to land jobs in two different US government agencies.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seized more than 90 laptops from Chapman’s home during the October 2023 attack. Chapman is also said to have 49 laptops in overseas locations, including multiple shipments to Chinese cities on the North Korean border.
Overall, the elaborate counterfeiting business won more than $17 million in illegal revenues from Chapman and North Korea from October 2020 to October 2023. Chapman was ordered to be supervised for three years in order to confiscate $284,556, which was paid to North Korea and pay the $176,850 sentence.
“Christina Chapman has committed many years of long plans, raised millions of dollars for the DPRK administration, used over 300 American businesses and government agencies, and stole dozens of identities of American citizens.”
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