Christina Marie Chapman, a freelancer from Arizona with over 100,000 TikTok followers, has been sentenced to eight and a half years in prison after helping North Korean workers get hired by US companies using false identities.
A court in Washington, DC found her guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, identity theft, and money laundering.
Along with the prison time, she will spend three more years under supervision, forfeit over $284,000, and repay $176,850.
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FBI Counterintelligence Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky said in a July 24 press release that she played a key part in a plan that brought in around $17 million to fund North Korea’s weapons development. He added:
Even an adversary as sophisticated as the North Korean government can’t succeed without the assistance of willing US citizens like Christina Chapman.
Starting in 2020, Chapman worked with North Korean agents to set up US-based remote jobs for overseas IT workers.
To make it seem like those workers were physically located in the US, she ran a “laptop farm” from her home. She connected dozens of company-issued computers to the internet so that remote users could log in without raising suspicion.
Officials later recovered more than 90 computers from her home. Chapman also sent 49 devices to addresses overseas, including several in a city near North Korea’s border.
Chapman moved the money through her own accounts. She also helped file tax documents and Social Security forms under the names of the people whose identities were being used.
On July 16, Paul Chowles, a former officer from the UK’s National Crime Agency, got 5.5 years for stealing 50 Bitcoin
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