Five individuals have pleaded guilty this month in US courts to helping North Korean IT workers obtain employment at more than 130 companies.
Four of the individuals are US nationals. One of them is 30-year-old Erick Ntekereze Prince, who used his company to supply ‘certified’ IT workers to companies in the United States. Authorities say the man knew that the IT workers were using false and stolen identities, and he hosted laptops provided by the victim companies at locations in Florida to trick them into believing that the workers were in the United States.
Prince, who is said to have earned more than $89,000 for his role in the scheme, is one of the several individuals charged in early 2025 for helping North Korean IT workers gain employment. The US Justice Department said the scheme involving Prince targeted 64 US companies and resulted in more than $900,000 worth of salary payments from victim firms.
The other three Americans who pleaded guilty are Audricus Phagnasay, 24, Alexander Paul Travis, 34, and Jason Salazar, 30. They were accused of providing their identities to fake IT workers between 2019 and 2022.
In addition to hosting laptops for the workers, the three helped them pass employee screening processes, including drug tests.
Travis was an active-duty member of the US Army when he took part in the scheme. He earned more than $51,000, while Salazar and Phagnasay earned a few thousand dollars each. The scheme earned the North Korean IT workers roughly $1.28 million in salary payments.
Each of these four US nationals has pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy.
The fifth individual is Ukrainian national Oleksandr Didenko, who pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy and one count of aggravated identity theft. He has also agreed to forfeit more than $1.4 million.
Didenko, who was arrested in 2024 in Poland, helped North Korean IT workers obtain employment at 40 US firms, enabling them to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Overall, the DOJ says, the five defendants helped North Korean workers trick more than 136 companies into hiring them, generating over $2.2 million for the regime.
North Korea is believed to have deployed thousands of skilled IT workers abroad, and they are estimated to generate hundreds of millions of dollars every year, which is used to fund North Korea’s weapons programs.
In addition to the guilty pleas, the Justice Department announced on Friday that it has filed civil complaints for the forfeiture of more than $15 million worth of USDT (Tether) cryptocurrency seized by the FBI in March 2025 from the North Korean threat actor tracked as APT38, better known as Lazarus.
The hackers have raised a significant amount of money for the North Korean government through cryptocurrency heists, including ones that exceeded $100 million.
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