US-American arrested for supporting North Korea through home office jobs

Once again, a US citizen has been charged and arrested for illegally supporting North Korea by operating a number of manipulated notebooks that North Korean IT employees used under false identities for home office jobs at American companies. The 38-year-old Matthew Isaac K. had supported the individuals located in China in identity theft and money laundering. Their salaries had flowed into North Korea's missile and munitions programs, amounting to several million US dollars.

As early as 2022, the US government warned of the inadvertent employment of IT experts from North Korea. Thousands of highly qualified IT employees sent by the North Korean regime had used part of their salaries to help finance the nuclear weapons development program sanctioned by the United Nations. In May 2024, a US-American woman from Arizona was arrested. She is facing a long prison sentence for helping hundreds of North Koreans get IT jobs.

Monthly wage for running the laptop farm

According to court documents, Matthew K., who has now been arrested in Nashville in the US state of Tennessee, helped foreign IT specialists to obtain home office jobs with American companies. The unnamed companies are active in the technological, financial and media sectors. They were made to believe they were employing US citizens, but they were actually North Koreans under the stolen identity of US citizen "Andrew M.", according to the US Department of Justice.

Matthew K. had operated a so-called laptop farm in Nashville between July 2022 and August 2023 from notebooks sent to him by the deceived companies for remote work – with Andrew M. as the addressee. Matthew K. had equipped the laptops with remote desktop software so that the North Korean IT employees, who were localized in China, could access the company networks. Matthew K. was paid monthly for this.

Charge of money laundering and tax fraud

The IT employees allegedly working from Nashville were each paid more than 250,000 dollars during this time. This income was falsely reported to the US Internal Revenue Service and the US Social Security Administration under the name of Andrew M. In addition, Matthew K., with the support of other persons, would have transferred the remuneration received first to his own accounts and then to foreign accounts. The latter were assigned to North Korean and Chinese citizens.

In August 2023, the laptop farm in Nashville was seized by court order. Matthew K. is accused of conspiracy to commit computer fraud, money laundering and the illegal employment of foreign nationals, as well as wire fraud and identity theft. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted, but at least two years in prison for aggravated identity theft.

(fds)