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.
It is pretty interesting. They use a guy in the country as the employee, but there’s also been instances of doctored passport photos they scanned over. There was also an example of a guy using an AI face filter during a video interview and it looked really bad 😅, he got asked to put his hand over his face but he decided to end the meeting instead.
I genuinely don’t care if they work Amerikkkan jobs, they get their shit done. But all these security firms and the FBI are pushing this “they use the income to pay for North Korean nuclear programs!!”
https://www.npr.org/2024/07/05/nx-s1-5009286/north-koreans-got-jobs-at-fortune-500-companies-to-fund-the-nuclear-weapons-program
https://fortune.com/2025/04/07/north-korean-it-workers-infiltrating-fortune-500-companies/
https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/us/can-you-believe-this-north-korean-hackers-pose-as-u-s-developers-in-fortune-500-firms-funnel-millions-to-kim-jong-uns-nuclear-weapons-programs/articleshow/120101644.cms
It’s all just slop using North Korea as clickbait. Do they really think a few six figure salaries are gonna be able to put a dent in nuclear research? Even if they had hundreds of people funneling money into their program, after taxes + paying their guy in the US they’re pretending to be + laundering that money, you’re only getting $XX,XXX per employee.
I’m sure a ransomware scheme would be more profitable with a faster payout.
yeah, I’m not buying the whole nuclear bullshit story,. Getting USD into the economy is probably useful for them on a wide enough level though, for getting around sanctions or whatever. If anything the guy at my work is probably doing the same “scam” (not really a scam just circumventing immigration and labor law a little to make a US salary while being from elsewhere…) just from a different country of origin, not DPRK. Of course if a good opportunity arises I suppose having ins in US companies computer systems provides some espionage opportunities but for the most part it’d be pointless.
Its just a high tech version of workers from mexico coming to the US to work and sending money home tbh.