Five admit helping North Korea evade sanctions through IT worker schemes

Five pleaded guilty to helping North Korea secretly generate revenue by running illegal IT-worker schemes that violated international sanctions, according to the Justice Department. The individuals named are Audricus Phagnasay (24), Jason Salazar (30), Alexander Paul Travis (34), Oleksandr Didenko (28), and Erick Ntekereze Prince (30), who admitted roles in supporting the fraudulent operations.

U.S. and Ukrainian facilitators helped North Korean actors secure remote IT jobs in the U.S., defrauding 136 companies for $2.2M and compromising more than 18 identities, with the scheme running from 2019 to 2022 and salaries totalling about $1.28M. The DoJ’s civil actions also seek to forfeit more than $15M in USDT linked to North Korean APT38, while the FBI and prosecutors investigated the cases that aimed to disrupt North Korean funding for weapons programmes.

The scheme involved 64 U.S. companies and later involved Ukrainian and other accomplices, including the Ukrainian national Oleksandr Didenko, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identity theft for selling stolen identities to overseas IT workers. These actions, according to the DoJ, illustrate a broad approach to disrupting North Korea’s illicit revenue streams.