U.S. DOJ Pursues North Korea’s Illicit Money Machine, Seizes More Crypto

The U.S. Department of Justice rounded up several convictions in its pursuit of domestic helpers in schemes by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to pocket large amounts of cryptocurrency, and it also seized assets from cyber heists targeting crypto platforms, the department said in a Friday statement.

The five guilty pleas announced by the DOJ were connected to individuals that aided North Korea in getting U.S. jobs for fraudulent information-technology workers, obtaining stolen U.S. identities for the workers and helping mask their geographic origin as the IT employees pulled down paychecks from dozens of U.S. businesses. Probes conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation “continue to expose the North Korean government’s relentless campaign to evade U.S. sanctions and generate millions of dollars to fund its authoritarian regime and weapons programs,” said Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, in a statement. He urged companies to improve their vetting of remote workers to counter this trend.

The authorities have also been steadily seizing crypto assets from bad actors around the world, marking another $15 million in Tether’s USDT from North Korean sources on Friday. The assets are associated with cyber heists tied to the group known as Advanced Persistent Threat 38, which is allegedly connected to the North Korean military.