Two Americans have been sentenced to years in prison for their roles in a covert scheme that defrauded major US companies while generating $5 million for the North Korean regime, the Justice Department said Wednesday.
Zhenxing “Danny” Wang, 39, and Kejia “Tony” Wang, 42, both of New Jersey, were alleged middlemen in an elaborate conspiracy that involved tricking Fortune 500 companies to hire overseas tech workers who stole the identities of various Americans. A federal court in Boston sentenced Zhenxing Wang to over seven years in prison and Kejia Wang to nine years in prison.
At the heart of the scheme were “laptop farms” — or clusters of US company-issued computers — that Wang and Wang allegedly managed from their homes in the US. Those laptops gave the overseas tech workers a foothold into major American companies to draw salaries and in one case steal export-controlled data from a California-based defense contractor.
Other companies who unwittingly paid the overseas tech workers include a semiconductor distributor in Massachusetts and a software development firm in California, according to prosecutors.
North Korea is increasingly turning to such schemes to circumvent sanctions and generate revenue for its nuclear weapons program, according to US officials. In 2024, prosecutors charged an Arizona woman in a similar scheme that compromised the identities of 60 Americans and affected 300 US companies, including a “premier” Silicon Valley tech firm.
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