Federal investigators arrested a man in Nashville, Tennessee, for helping North Koreans in a remote work scam.
The aim was to fool US companies into thinking they were legitimate remote IT workers.
The Justice Department charged 38-year-old, Matthew Isaac Knoot, with conspiracy. Allegedly, he helped the North Koreans receive “hundreds of thousands of dollars in income.”
He assisted North Koreans in using stolen identities to pose as US citizens, hosted company laptops at his residences, downloaded and installed software without authorisation, and helped launder payments for the remote information technology work, including to accounts tied to North Korean and Chinese actors.
They were able to scam companies based in the US and UK by using the real-life identity of an American referred to as “Andrew M.”
In return, Knoot received a monthly fee of $500 per laptop during the scheme, which lasted from July 2022 to August 2023.
By August 2023, investigators had issued a search warrant for Knoot’s so-called “laptop farm.”
The IT workers associated with Knoot’s cell were each paid over $250,000 for their work between that time.
With the same scheme, North Koreans got access to company employees, giving them an easy way to conduct cyberespionage or hacks.
Knoot now faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the charges. These include aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and cause damage to protected computers.
In May, the US also arrested a 49-year-old woman in Arizona for aiding North Koreans in a similar scheme.
