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submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

FBI says North Korea deployed thousands of IT workers to get remote jobs in US with fake IDs::North Koreans are using fake IDs and learning IT skills to sneak their way into remote American jobs, according to the FBI and Justice departments.

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[-] ZeroCool@feddit.ch 169 points 1 year ago

North Koreans are using fake IDs and learning IT skills to sneak their way into remote American jobs, according to the FBI and Justice departments.

CEOs on Monday be like: "Okay we need everyone to return to the office full time... It's for national security."

[-] pennomi@lemmy.world 53 points 1 year ago

Only good argument I’ve heard so far.

[-] crawancon@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago

I'd show up just to prove I'm real.

[-] Agent641@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Id stay home so they think Im North Korean.

[-] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago

I’ll happily pop in for a quarterly party to prove that I’m not zooming in from NK.

[-] SuperJetShoes@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago

Does no-one check the damn IDs, ffs? It's a simple matter of typing some numbers into a computer.

I don't know about the U.S. but in the UK where I'm from, "illegally hiring a non-UK citizen" would be a criminal offence for the hiring company. How are they going to tax them?

[-] killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 50 points 1 year ago

A good chunk of the American economy is dependent on companies not checking the legal status of employees.

[-] jaybone@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I get cash jobs like manual labor / agriculture, but where are these companies depositing these paychecks?

[-] InvertedParallax@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Contracting firms which subcontract out.

[-] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Another good way to fuck over the legitimate workers

[-] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago

From the summary posted below, it seems the US companies are outsourcing to China and Russia, and North Koreans living in those countries are getting these jobs. I'm guessing a part of whatever they send home is being taken, probably without their consent, by the NK government for weapon manufacturing.

It would be hard for a US company to verify if a document presented as a Chinese or Russian ID is actually from those countries or a forgery. You could ask for a passport, but they could always say they don't have one.

[-] victoitor@lemmy.eco.br 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Holy smokes!! Part of their taxes are invested in their military industrial complex???

MADNESS!!

[-] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Are they just talking about taxes? I was thinking the NK government might be asking the workers for some 'voluntary' donations. If it is just the government taxing them and part of the tax revenue going towards the military then it doesn't seem like anything illegal is happening. Well, apart from the faking IDs part, but a bunch of poor people faking IDs to get jobs is a much much smaller issue than the NK government faking IDs to fund nukes.

[-] victoitor@lemmy.eco.br 1 points 1 year ago

Every time I see a comment about North Korea, I recommend watching "The Haircut" by BoyBoy. You can find it on YouTube. It's just 20 minutes long and it's quite entertaining to watch.

There's a nice part on the video about the "Prison Camps" and "Death Squads" which are applicable to "voluntary donations" as well. It also applies to the "poor people of NK" as well.

[-] SuperJetShoes@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Wouldn't the ID need to be associated with a verifiable green card? (Again, not an expert in US employment)

[-] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Only if they worked physically in the US. these people work offshore for US companies.

[-] SuperJetShoes@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago
[-] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I'm guessing here but based on how I've done international contracts... The US-based company pays the not us-based company, and that not US-based company pays the employees. The not US-based company is responsible for ensuring that the employee can legally work in the country that they are physically in. And since that country is not America, they don't need an American green card.

[-] SuperJetShoes@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

All perfectly legal (unless sanctions forbid it).

But in that case they wouldn't need any fake IDs.

[-] coffinwood@feddit.de 19 points 1 year ago

Man, Mark Zuckerberg's gotten old.

[-] dingdongitsabear@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 year ago

feels like an austin powers discarded skit... achieving world dominance by pretending to be mike from accounting who does excel like really good

[-] cricket97@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

US companies should not be able to outsource labor overseas.

[-] Perhyte@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

According to the article, the companies didn't know that's what they were doing in this case. They thought they were hiring people living in the US:

Greenberg said the workers used various techniques to make it look like they were working in the US, including paying Americans to use their home Wi-Fi connections.

[-] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

Ok, just so we're clear... The entire "scheme" was to get jobs working remotely in the US. And then doing those jobs adequately, and collecting a paycheck?

Truly deprived... I hope they catch every one of these monsters.

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 14 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Thousands of information technology workers contracting with US companies have for years secretly sent millions of dollars of their wages to North Korea for use in its ballistic missile program, FBI and Department of Justice officials said.

Court documents allege that the government of North Korea dispatched thousands of skilled IT workers to live primarily in China and Russia with the goal of deceiving businesses from the US and elsewhere into hiring them as freelance remote employees.

The Justice Department in recent years has sought to expose and disrupt a broad variety of criminal schemes aimed at bolstering the North Korean regime, including its nuclear weapons program.

Two years ago, the Justice Department charged three North Korean computer programmers and members of the government's military intelligence agency with a broad range of global hacks that officials say were carried out at the behest of the regime.

Law enforcement officials said at the time that the prosecution highlighted the profit-driven motive behind North Korea's criminal hacking, a contrast from other adversarial nations like Russia, China, and Iran that are generally more interested in espionage, intellectual property theft or even disrupting democracy.

The panel of experts said in a report that the hackers used increasingly sophisticated techniques to gain access to digital networks involved in cyber finance and to steal information that could be useful in North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs from governments, individuals, and companies.


The original article contains 754 words, the summary contains 232 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Do you have any launch cooooooodes?

this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
341 points (96.7% liked)

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