A New Jersey man was among nine people charged Monday in the U.S. government’s latest attempt to unravel a far-reaching North Korean funding scheme.
Zhenxing “Danny” Wang was detained Monday at his New Jersey home and will be extradited to Boston to face charges in Massachusetts federal court, the Justice Department said in a press release.
The other eight people charged in Monday’s indictment include six Chinese nationals and two Taiwanese nationals, none of whom have been arrested.
The North Korean scheme involves IT workers stealing the identities of American citizens and posing as remote workers in the U.S. while actually residing in North Korea and sending their funds to the country’s government.
“These schemes target and steal from U.S. companies and are designed to evade sanctions and fund the North Korean regime’s illicit programs, including its weapons programs,” assistant attorney general John Eisenberg said Monday.
The feds first warned companies about the North Korean operation in 2022 and have announced numerous charges in the following years. In 2023, the Justice Department said there were likely thousands of fraudulent remote workers earning money for North Korea.
Monday’s indictment targeted a group that raised an estimated $5 million, cost U.S. companies an additional $3 million and stole the identities of more than 80 U.S. citizens, according to the feds.
Wang was one of at least six “U.S. facilitators” who hosted laptops from U.S. companies at their homes in order to deceive the companies into believing the workers were in the U.S., investigators said.
