A federal court in St. Louis indicted 14 North Korean nationals in a long-running scheme in which they used false information and stolen identities of American citizens to secure jobs as information technology workers at U.S. companies and funnel millions of dollars to Pyongyang's weapons programs while working remotely.
The plot, which involved thousands of IT workers, generated $88 million for the repressive regime over six years, the Department of Justice said.
Along with the wages they received, the conspirators also earned extra money by stealing sensitive company information and then threatening to release the information unless the companies made extortion payments.
The plotters used financial systems in the U.S. and China to transfer the funds to the North Korean government in support of the country's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, the indictment says.
The IT workers, some of whom earned up to $300,000 a year, used stolen, borrowed or bought identities from U.S. citizens to get hired, but they also paid Americans to use their laptops and told them to install software that allowed the computers to be accessed from overseas.
The so-called "laptop farms" allowed the North Koreans to escape detection.
"By arranging to have laptops physically located in the United States, conspirators made it appear as if the fake U.S.-based employees were accessing laptops to do work, when in fact the IT workers were located outside the United States," the Justice Department said.
The North Koreans, known as "IT Warriors," would compete to see who could generate the most money for their government with bonuses and other prizes awarded to the top performers.
"As part of their scheme, North Korean IT workers obtained salaried employment at numerous U.S.-based companies and nonprofit organizations. In some instances, U.S. employers unwittingly employed North Korean IT workers for years and paid them hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary," the Justice Department said.
The State Department has offered a $5 million reward for information about the suspects.
The 14 have been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering and identity theft.
"While we have disrupted this group and identified its leadership, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The government of North Korea has trained and deployed thousands of IT workers to perpetrate this same scheme against U.S. companies every day," Special Agent in Charge Ashley T. Johnson of the FBI St. Louis Field Office said in a statement.
