North Korean IT workers indicted for funnelling US money to Pyongyang

The plan saw tens of millions of dollars skimmed from US firms to be directed back to North Korea to help fund weapons development, the FBI said, Report informs via Euronews.

Fourteen North Korean nationals have been indicted for their alleged part in a scheme in which technology workers using false identities got jobs at US companies then funnelled their wages to Pyongyang for development of ballistic missiles and other weapons.

The head of the FBI office in St Louis, Missouri, Ashley T. Johnson, told a news conference on Thursday that the scheme involved thousands of IT workers and generated more than $88 million (€84m) for the North Korean government.

In addition to their wages, the workers are said to have stolen sensitive information from companies or threatened to leak information in exchange for extortion payments.

Victims included defrauded companies and people whose identities were stolen from across the US, including Missouri.

The indictments were filed on Wednesday in US District Court in St. Louis. All 14 defendants face wire fraud, money laundering, identity theft and other charges.

Most of those accused are believed to be in North Korea, and Johnson acknowledged that bringing them to justice will be difficult. The US Department of State is offering a $5 million (€4.8m) reward for information leading to the apprehension of any of the suspects.

According to federal authorities, the scheme involved collaboration from US citizens.

To execute the plan, North Korea dispatched thousands of IT workers to get hired and work remotely or as freelancers for US companies, sometimes using stolen identities. In other instances, they paid US citizens to let them use their home Wi-Fi connections, or to pose as the IT workers in on-camera job interviews.

Johnson said the FBI is also pursuing those "domestic enablers."

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," she said. "If your company has hired fully remote IT workers, more likely than not, you have hired or at least interviewed a North Korean national working on behalf of the North Korean government."

The US Justice Department in recent years has sought to expose and disrupt a broad variety of criminal schemes run for the benefit of Kim Jong-un's government in Pyongyang, including for the purposes of its nuclear weapons program.