Arizona woman to serve 8 years for identity theft schedule for the benefit of Noord -Korea

A woman from Arizona was sentenced on Thursday to imprisonment for her role in a $ 17 million scam that helped North Koreans to steal the identities of Americans and use them to land remotely with hundreds of American companies.

Judge Randolph Moss in the US ordered Christina Chapman to serve bars for more than eight years for what the Ministry of Justice described in a press release as “One of the largest North Korean IT employees’ fraud” had once charged the agency. The plot ran from 2020 to 2023.

Noord -Korea is sanctions from the United States – as well as the United Nations and various other countries – largely in response to the arms programs of the isolated authoritarian state.

The departments of State and Treasury, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation accuse Noord -Korea from the international use of thousands of IT employees to circumvent those sanctions and to contribute illegally to the North Korean economy.

“The Noord -Korean regime has generated millions of dollars for its nuclear weapon program by slaughtering American citizens, companies and financial institutions,” said FBI assistant director Roman Rozhavsky in a statement.

“Even an opponent who is as refined as the North Korean government cannot succeed without the help of willing American citizens such as Christina Chapman.”

The scam included 68 stolen American identities, more than 300 American companies and two international companies. The affected companies included Fortune 500 companies: including an American car manufacturer, a space manufacturer and a technology company in Silicon Valley, although the indictment did not mention specific companies.

The Ministry of Justice said that North Korean employees who used stolen identities had also tried to work at two different government agencies – American immigration and customs enforcement and the federal protective service – but were not successful.

She took off the scam by serving a “laptop farm” at her home, the doj said. There she would register with the laptops of the American companies to falsify that employees actually worked on American soil. She also shipped dozens of laptops and other technology abroad, including packages delivered to a Chinese city on the border of North Korea.

When the authorities searched her house in 2023, they found and grabbed more than 90 business devices.

A lawyer for Chapman did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

Authorities said that Chapman was recruited by an unknown conspirator in 2020 via her LinkedIn page, who asked that she would come “the American face” of their company.

In conviction documents, Chapman’s lawyers said that they initially did not understand the gravity and illegality of what she did. But when it became clear that she was involved in misconduct, they said, she continued with the scam to help pay for the treatment of her terminally sick mother for kidney cancer.

In a letter to the judge, Chapman apologized for her actions and said that she would spend her time in prison in therapy and counseling to tackle traumas from the past.

“I dealt with identity theft myself and it took me 17 years to repair the damage it caused me,” she wrote. “Knowing that I had a role in causing that kind of stress and suffering for others, I was deeply ashamed. My deepest and sincere apologies to everyone who has caused damage through my actions.”

The DOJ has investigated a number of cases in which Noord -Korea worked to cheat American companies to help finance their government. Last monthThe Acts Department announced actions that are being taken against such regulations, including an arrest, searches of 29 known or suspected “laptop companies” in 16 states, and the seizure of more than two dozen bank accounts “that were used for illegal funds too white.”