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Thousands of North Korean IT workers have infiltrated the Fortune 500--and they keep getting hired for more jobs
Fortune
Thousands of North Korean IT workers have infiltrated the Fortune 500—and they keep getting hired for more jobs
Amanda Gerut
Updated Mon, April 7, 2025 at 7:00 AM EDT
9 min read
• Fortune 500 companies have unwittingly hired thousands of software engineers who claim to be American developers but are actually North Korean citizens using stolen or fake identities. Through legitimate employment, the IT workers are illegally funneling their salaries to Kim Jong Un’s regime to fund prohibited weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs. The U.S. Treasury, State Department, and FBI collectively estimate the IT workers scam has generated hundreds of millions each year since 2018.
About 95% of the résumés Harrison Leggio gets in response to job postings for his crypto startup g8keep are from North Korean engineers pretending to be American, the founder estimates. He even once interviewed a job seeker who claimed to have worked at the same Manhattan-based cryptocurrency exchange as he did, during the time he worked there.
Turns out it was all a ruse: The programming languages the engineer said the company used were incorrect, and he claimed to have floated among teams rather than embedding in a single group, which “wasn’t a thing there,” said Leggio. … Nowadays, Leggio told Fortune he won’t even set up an interview with a candidate who seems promising on paper unless they agree to one final step.
“Say something negative about Kim Jong Un,” Leggio tells potential job candidates, referring to the third-generation authoritarian Supreme Leader of North Korea, officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Through research, Leggio learned insulting the DPRK’s Supreme Leader is forbidden, and North Korean citizens could face serious punishment for showing anything less than reverence. … “The first time I ever did it, the person started freaking out and cursing,” said Leggio.
{snip}
Thousands of North Korean IT workers have infiltrated the Fortune 500—and they keep getting hired for more jobs
Amanda Gerut
Updated Mon, April 7, 2025 at 7:00 AM EDT
9 min read
• Fortune 500 companies have unwittingly hired thousands of software engineers who claim to be American developers but are actually North Korean citizens using stolen or fake identities. Through legitimate employment, the IT workers are illegally funneling their salaries to Kim Jong Un’s regime to fund prohibited weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs. The U.S. Treasury, State Department, and FBI collectively estimate the IT workers scam has generated hundreds of millions each year since 2018.
About 95% of the résumés Harrison Leggio gets in response to job postings for his crypto startup g8keep are from North Korean engineers pretending to be American, the founder estimates. He even once interviewed a job seeker who claimed to have worked at the same Manhattan-based cryptocurrency exchange as he did, during the time he worked there.
Turns out it was all a ruse: The programming languages the engineer said the company used were incorrect, and he claimed to have floated among teams rather than embedding in a single group, which “wasn’t a thing there,” said Leggio. … Nowadays, Leggio told Fortune he won’t even set up an interview with a candidate who seems promising on paper unless they agree to one final step.
“Say something negative about Kim Jong Un,” Leggio tells potential job candidates, referring to the third-generation authoritarian Supreme Leader of North Korea, officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Through research, Leggio learned insulting the DPRK’s Supreme Leader is forbidden, and North Korean citizens could face serious punishment for showing anything less than reverence. … “The first time I ever did it, the person started freaking out and cursing,” said Leggio.
{snip}
2 replies
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