Ukrainian man jailed for identity theft that helped North Koreans get jobs at US companies

A U.S. national tribunal has sentenced a Ukrainian antheral to 5 years successful situation for his portion successful a long-running individuality theft cognition that helped overseas North Korean workers summation fraudulent employment astatine dozens of U.S. companies.

U.S. prosecutors brought charges successful 2024 against Oleksandr Didenko, 29, a nonmigratory of Kyiv, for mounting up North Koreans with stolen identities of U.S. citizens to get hired and gain a wage. Under this scheme, the workers’ net were funneled backmost to Pyongyang, which the authorities utilized to money its internationally sanctioned atomic weapons program.

This is the latest successful a drawstring of caller convictions of individuals progressive successful facilitating ongoing North Korean so-called “IT worker” schemes. Security researchers person described North Korean workers arsenic a “triple threat” to U.S. and Western businesses, arsenic they interruption U.S. sanctions, each the portion enabling North Koreans to bargain delicate institution data, and past aboriginal extort those unfortunate companies into not publically releasing firm secrets.

Prosecutors said Didenko ran a website called Upworksell, which allowed radical moving overseas, including North Koreans, to bargain oregon rent stolen identities for gaining employment with U.S. firms. Didenko handled much than 870 stolen identities, per the Justice Department.

The FBI seized Upworksell successful 2024 and diverted its postulation to its ain servers. Polish authorities arrested Didenko, who was past extradited to the U.S. and aboriginal pleaded guilty.

A screenshot showing Upworksell’s website astatine the clip it was seized by the FBI. (ImagE: TechCrunch/screenshot)

In a connection this week, the U.S. Department of Justice said Didenko besides paid radical to person and big computers astatine their homes successful California, Tennessee, and Virginia. These “laptop farms” are rooms containing racks of unfastened laptops, allowing North Koreans to remotely execute their enactment arsenic if they were physically successful the United States.

Security elephantine CrowdStrike said last year that it has seen a crisp emergence successful the fig of North Korean workers infiltrating companies, often arsenic distant developers oregon different method bundle engineering jobs. The strategy is among galore that the North Korean authorities uses to enrich itself, portion incapable to usage the planetary fiscal system, acknowledgment to planetary sanctions.

North Koreans are besides known to impersonate recruiters and VCs successful efforts to instrumentality unsuspecting high-profile and net-worth victims into granting entree to their computers, including crypto.