The Justice Department says North Korean IT workers used stolen identities to get hired at more than 70 American companies. The FBI seized 187 devices in Texas.
NEWS
The person who got the job may never have sat in the chair. Federal officials announced Tuesday that North Korean IT workers, using stolen or made-up American identities, were hired for remote work at more than 70 U.S. companies, and that a network of homes in Texas helped them look like they were working from inside the country.
According to the Justice Department, an indictment in the Northern District of Ohio charges 14 people in four counts covering wire fraud, money laundering, and identity theft. Two U.S. nationals, Michael James Bostelle of Pennsylvania and Juan Cecilio Pena Carrillo of Texas, were arrested. Ten more defendants, described by the department as China-based, are also charged, and two others are under seal. The department says the scheme ran from 2019 to about July 2025 and brought in more than $3 million. The charges are allegations, and defendants are presumed innocent.
Between Sept. 21 and 25, the FBI searched more than 40 Texas residences it describes as laptop farms, according to the Justice Department. Agents seized 187 laptops and keyboard, video, mouse (KVM) devices, about 100 of them in North Texas, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas said. The effort was named Operation Lonestar Roundup.
A laptop farm is a house where company-issued laptops are plugged in and left running. The workers log in remotely, so the employer sees a computer in an American home. The U.S. Attorney's Office says the U.S.-based helpers received laptops from victim companies, configured them, installed remote-access software and sent the earnings to accounts controlled by North Korea.
The department says the victims were employers in Ohio, 16 other states and Washington, D.C., in health care, communications, cyber support, retail and manufacturing.
U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould said the case is "far more than fraud" and described "a hostile foreign regime infiltrating American companies through stolen identities," according to the Texas release. He added that each laptop farm shuts down a revenue stream North Korea uses to fund weapons programs.
FBI Dallas Special Agent in Charge R. Joseph Rothrock said, "Each laptop seized potentially represents one company that has hired a DPRK IT worker," and asked any company or person with information to report it at ic3.gov.
The Texas release names no defendants, and says the investigation is continuing and more details will follow.
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