Identities of More Than 80 Americans Stolen for North Korean IT Worker Scams

The US Justice Department revealed the identity theft number along with one arrest and a crackdown on “laptop farms” that allegedly facilitate North Korean tech worker impersonators across the US.

For years, the North Korean government has found a burgeoning source of sanctions-evading revenue by tasking its citizens with secretly applying for remote tech jobs in the West. A newly revealed takedown operation by American law enforcement makes clear just how much of the infrastructure used to pull off those schemes has been based in the United States—and just how many Americans' identities were stolen by the North Korean impersonators to carry them out.