Five Individuals Plead Guilty to Aiding North Korea’s Illicit Revenue Generation Schemes

A recent announcement from the U.S. Department of Justice revealed that five individuals have pleaded guilty to assisting North Korea in its illicit revenue generation schemes. These activities include remote IT worker fraud and cryptocurrency theft.

The U.S. authorities have taken action to seek the forfeiture of $15 million in cryptocurrency that was obtained through heists carried out by the APT38 threat group. This group is associated with the Lazarus hacking group.

The facilitators, consisting of four Americans and one Ukrainian, used various means, including their own, false, or stolen identities, to enable North Korean agents to secure employment with American companies for remote work.

These individuals then funneled their salaries and, in some cases, stolen data back to the North Korean government.

According to the DOJ, the actions of these five individuals impacted 136 companies across the nation, resulting in over $2.2 million in revenue for the DPRK regime.

The five individuals who pleaded guilty are:

• Oleksandr Didenko – Pleaded guilty to wire-fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. Didenko facilitated the employment of overseas IT workers at 40 U.S. companies using stolen U.S. identities.
• Erick Ntekereze Prince – Pleaded guilty to wire-fraud conspiracy. Through his company, Taggcar Inc., Prince placed overseas IT workers at 64 U.S. companies using stolen identities.
• Audricus Phagnasay, Jason Salazar, and Alexander Paul Travis – All pleaded guilty to wire-fraud conspiracy for their involvement in the schemes between 2019 and 2022.

Didenko has agreed to forfeit $570,000 in fiat currency and an additional $830,000 worth of cryptocurrency.

The DOJ also highlighted two civil forfeiture complaints aimed at seizing over $15 million that was stolen and laundered by North Korea’s APT38.

These funds are related to four major incidents in 2023 where $382 million was stolen from cryptocurrency exchange platforms in Panama, Estonia, and Seychelles.

APT38 has been laundering these funds through various means, including cryptocurrency bridges, mixers, exchanges, and OTC traders. Authorities have managed to trace and seize $15 million so far.

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