Thousands of remote IT workers sent wages to North Korea to help fund weapons program, FBI says

By JIM SALTER
Associated Press

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Federal authorities say that thousands of information technology workers contracting with U.S. companies secretly sent millions of dollars of their wages to North Korea for use in its ballistic missile program. Court documents allege that North Korea’s government dispatched skilled IT workers to live primarily in China and Russia with the goal of deceiving businesses from the U.S. and elsewhere into hiring them as freelance remote employees. The FBI says the workers used various techniques to make it look like they were working in the U.S., including paying Americans to use their home Wi-Fi connections. The Justice Department said that in some instances, the North Korean workers also infiltrated computer networks and stole information from the companies that hired them.