Two Americans sentenced for helping North Korea steal $5 million in fake IT worker scheme

Two New Jersey residents were sentenced to 7.5 and 9 years in prison for orchestrating infrastructure that allowed North Korea to place fake IT workers inside over 100 U.S. companies, including Fortune 500 firms. The scheme, which operated from 2021 to 2024, involved running "laptop farms" to mask North Korean workers as domestic employees, netting the regime $5 million and providing access to trade secrets and source code. U.S. prosecutors characterized it as a direct national security threat.