A woman in Arizona was sentenced to 102 month in prison for conspiring with North Korean entities to infiltrate American companies.
Her methods are being considered a “code red” by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro, as American companies are unknowingly aiding North Korea in a tech war against the United States.
Christina Chapman, 50, was found to be working on behalf of the North Korean munitions development department, using a complex network of stolen identities in a scheme that is sure to send chills down the spine of any American.
‘This is a code red. Your tech sectors are being infiltrated by North Korea.’
Chapman set up a network of almost 100 laptops at her home in Arizona, designed to allow North Korean agents to log in to the computers and pose as Americans working U.S. companies.
Using the fraudulent identities of 68 Americans, the North Koreans acquired remote employment with 309 companies, some of which were Fortune 500 companies.
Simply put, the North Korean entities would remotely access the computers in Chapman’s home, then fraudulently infiltrate the companies they were purporting to work at, making it seem as if the activity was coming from an Arizona address.
Many of the foreign agents listed their home addresses as Chapman’s residence and received paychecks at her address. This resulted in huge sums of money going directly to the North Korean government.
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In total, Chapman helped procure $17 million for the North Korean munitions department and will be forced to pay a fine of $176,850 and forfeit over $284,000 that was to be paid to the North Koreans, according to the Department of Justice.
“North Korea’s munition department has trained and deployed more than 3,000 workers in information technology, or IT skills, so that they can then commit fraud on companies in the United States to generate revenue for the North Korean regime,” Pirro stated during a press conference on Friday.
In a “message to corporate America,” Pirro continued, “This is a code red. Your tech sectors are being infiltrated by North Korea. And when big companies are lax and they’re not doing their due diligence, they are putting America’s security at risk.”
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Christina Chapman’s North Korean laptop farm in Arizona. Image via Department of Justice
Photos from the DOJ showed not only an example of one of the fraudulent identities but also Chapman’s remote worker farm. Dozens of laptops are seen, with notes denoting which U.S. companies they are assigned to and the fake identities they are associated with.
Pirro called on American corporations to step up their employee verification systems, which “went through a change as a result of COVID.”
“There is this lax kind of overseeing of who employees are. It’s time for businesses to verify their workers, monitor their conduct, create a zero-trust structure, and they’ve got to do this before the security of our country is compromised,” Pirro added.
More than 90 laptops were seized from Chapman’s home in October 2023. She was also found to have shipped 49 laptops and other devices supplied by U.S. companies to different locations overseas, including to Chinese cities on the North Korean border.
The DOJ noted that North Korea’s IT network has generated between $250 and $600 million annually as of 2024.
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Author: Andrew Chapados
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