- An Arizona woman who claims to have unwittingly been helping North Korean IT workers get jobs at American companies is facing sentencing next week in what prosecutors have called one of the largest worker fraud schemes ever charged by the Department of Justice. She pleaded guilty to being part of a scheme in which IT workers sought remote jobs at 309 companies, generating $17.1 million in compensation that was sent to North Korea.
An Arizona woman faces sentencing next week in an early test case for how U.S. authorities will mete out punishment to Americans who enmesh themselves in a global scheme in which thousands of North Korean technology workers illegally hold jobs at U.S. companies under false or stolen identities. The tactic generates up to $600 million in revenue for North Korea annually, according to UN estimates, and the funds finance authoritarian leader Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons program.
