A woman who just ran TikTok was no ordinary US citizen. The Arizona resident secretly organized a laptop farm with North Korea hackers.
According to investigators, Christine-Marie Chapman met her North Korean handlers through LinkedIn. The tiktoker with 100 thousand followers acted as an intermediary and later became a full-fledged operator of the «farm». The large-scale scheme allowed North Korean hackers to work under the guise of remote IT specialists in more than 300 US companies. They used fake names, VPNs, and stolen personal data of Americans. The hackers infiltrated not just small offices, but companies from the list of Fortune 500 — tech giants from Silicon Valley, aerospace firms, and even large media holdings.
The American took over the organization of the technical part. She ran the so-called «laptop farm» from her home, receiving devices from American employers. Of course, the latter did not suspect that the notional Smith Johnson was a remote hacker from North Korea. Just like Amazon and HBO did not suspect their animators.
How did they interview for the job? For example, the DPRK is known for using European/American actors or «straw men» for the first stages of interviews to hide the true background of candidates. In some cases, only small details — such as Korean characters in the windows during the interview or proxy servers with suspicious IP addresses — can help to identify a connection to Pyongyang.
However, the tech giants failed to cope with this task and paid money to dubious employees. A ticktaker received the salary for the North Koreans. Then she would withdraw her part and move the rest abroad — often through fake checks or direct deposits. During the searches of her home, more than 90 laptops were found, operated by North Korean specialists. She sent another 59 laptops abroad, including to a Chinese city near the DPRK.
Thanks to this, the DPRK regime earned at least $17 million over three years (2020 — 2023) from this scheme. But what Marie earned for herself was a criminal record, confiscation of property, and close attention from the authorities. She was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison, three years of supervised release, confiscation of more than $284,000, and compensation of $176,850.
It is no secret that North Korea is actively promotes its IT staff and crypto-crime geniuses to foreign companies. The country wants to earn more money for its nuclear and missile programs. But the government does not shy away from theft: in 2024 alone, according to Chainalysis, DPRK-linked hackers stole more than $1.34 billion in cryptocurrency, which is 21% more than last year. As a result: North Korea becomes the third largest country holding bitcoin.
Marie Chapman’s sentence is one of the harshest in such cases, but not the only one. Investigators believe that the tiktoker is not the first or the last American woman to participate in such schemes.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
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