The U.S. Department of Justice is pursuing North Korean criminals for fraudulent IT work and theft of Crypto Assets, seizing 15 million USDT.

PANews, November 15 - According to reports from Coindesk, U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors and investigators have seized an additional $15 million worth of USDT in their ongoing pursuit of North Korean criminals, with five defendants pleading guilty. According to court documents related to the plea agreement, intermediaries from the United States and Ukraine assisted North Korean personnel in obtaining remote IT jobs with U.S. companies. For example, these intermediaries provided their own fake identities or stolen identity information and placed laptops provided by the victim companies at residences across the United States to create the illusion that IT personnel were working on U.S. soil. These defendants' fraudulent employment schemes affected more than 136 U.S. victim companies, generating over $2.2 million in revenue for the North Korean regime, and resulted in the identity information of more than 18 Americans being compromised. Secondly, a North Korean military hacker group known as “Advanced Persistent Threat 38” (APT38) carried out millions of dollars in virtual currency theft on four overseas cryptocurrency platforms in 2023. While APT38 members continue to launder money, the U.S. government has frozen and seized virtual currencies worth over $15 million and is currently seeking to confiscate these virtual currencies to eventually return them to their rightful owners. North Korea uses these two programs to raise funds for its weapons and other priorities, in violation of sanction regulations.