(NewsNation) — Getting a job in IT can be a difficult task, let alone one that’s remote. But a new investigation by the FBI says a hidden workforce from North Korea has been able to crack the code.
The agency in August said that an ongoing scheme allowed North Korean workers to obtain remote IT contract jobs and infiltrate Fortune 500 companies for years.
“Without getting into ongoing investigations, we identified just this past week a [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] remote IT worker that was working for the federal government,” Todd Hemmen, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Capabilities Branch, told a panel in late July.
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“Still kind of unpacking that recent case. It’s actually a little bit baffling to me, not understanding this particular agency’s process. But the short answer is yes, we are seeing remote IT workers not just in the private sector — although a vastly higher proportion in the private sector — but we’re also seeing this impact the government to a degree.”
How has the scheme worked?
The FBI says they began receiving warnings about the scheme four years ago, when North Korea’s government dispatched thousands of expert IT workers across the world.
The goal was to obtain fraudulent employment and gain revenue for the country’s weapons programs, according to the agency.
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To get the IT jobs, the North Korean workers used stolen identities, AI tools and American accomplices. According to a Wall Street Journal documentary, AI is employed to write convincing cover letters and résumés.
The stolen identities of Americans helped pass hiring screenings, while North Korean IT workers compensate U.S. facilitators to run their devices in the country while the workers patch in remotely.
“DPRK workers present a unique detection challenge for defenders: rather than compromising accounts or breaking in via gaps in the organizations’ environments, they’re tricking companies into remotely hiring them, and oftentimes actually doing the legitimate work they were hired to do,” Huntress, a security platform, added.
What does the workers’ money fund in North Korea?
All the pay received from the fraudulent workers goes toward strengthening North Korea’s military, according to the Treasury Department.
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The department said the scheme has earned the Asian nation as much as $800 million annually, by recent estimates.
Has the scheme resulted in any arrests?
Several arrests have been made in connection with the scheme, federal officials said.
In 2025, a Maryland man was given 15 months in prison for allowing a North Korean national to work on software development contracts for the Federal Aviation Administration.
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The Justice Department noted the man fraudulently gained work with at least 13 American companies.
In April, Kejia Wang and Zhenxing Wang, 39, were also sentenced for their roles in facilitating North Korean remote IT workers posing as U.S. residents to obtain work at more than 100 companies.
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