US prosecutors said they have secured multiple convictions against individuals accused of helping North Korean IT workers infiltrate American companies through remote employment schemes linked to crypto and technology firms.<\/p>\n
The US Department of Justice said separate courts recently sentenced Matthew Issac Knoot and Erick Ntekereze Prince for assisting North Korean operatives posing as remote US-based employees.<\/p>\n
Authorities described the individuals as \u201claptop farmers,\u201d a term used for people who receive company-issued laptops in the United States before configuring remote access systems allowing overseas workers to control the devices while appearing domestically located.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department said the pair helped generate approximately $1.2 million for North Korea while affecting nearly 70 US companies.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said the remote worker schemes frequently targeted technical and engineering roles at crypto and blockchain firms to potentially gain access to sensitive infrastructure, digital assets or internal systems.<\/p>\n
Knoot and Prince were each sentenced to 18 months in prison, while courts also ordered financial forfeitures and restitution payments tied to earnings generated through the operation.<\/p>\n
The convictions add to a growing number of US prosecutions involving North Korean-linked remote employment schemes, including separate laptop farm operators sentenced earlier this year for helping generate millions of dollars for the North Korean government.<\/p>\n
Cybersecurity researchers have previously warned that North Korean operatives increasingly use artificial intelligence tools, stolen identities and remote work infrastructure to infiltrate crypto companies and technology businesses globally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US prosecutors said they have secured multiple convictions against individuals accused of helping North Korean IT workers infiltrate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[31,7122,34,7123,1332],"class_list":{"0":"post-9339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-north-korea","8":"tag-korea","9":"tag-laptop-farmers","10":"tag-north-korea","11":"tag-north-korean-crypto","12":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}