Image Credit: Carson-Newman University / Facebook
The Tennessee Conservative [By Paula Gomes] –
Two foreign students attending university in East Tennessee have been arrested for participating in an identity theft scheme linked to North Korea.
Residences in Jefferson City – one a dorm room at Carson-Newman University – were searched by FBI agents in early May as part of a federal investigation to uncover “laptop farms” that had foreign technology workers employed by hundreds of U.S. companies using the stolen identities of American residents.
According to the Justice Department, Ukrainian national Oleksandr Didenko, a graduate student at Carson-Newman attending on a student visa, was involved for years with creating fake accounts at IT job search platforms and money service transmitters based in the U.S.
A Colombian undergrad who had applied for asylum in the U.S. was also involved in the illegal enterprise.
Hosting multiple computers, connected to the internet via the same network, those running the “laptop farm” assisted foreign individuals – some who were based in North Korea – with logging on to the computers and giving the appearance that they were working from a location within the U.S. The Tennessee location combined with laptop farms in California and Virginia were hosting nearly 80 computers with thousands of foreign workers logged on at any given time.
Individuals overseas, including some in North Korea, bought accounts and false identities from a website that Didenko hosted and then used them to apply for jobs at U.S. companies. That online domain – upworksell.com – has since been seized by the Justice Department who said that Didenko “offered a full array of services to allow an individual to pose under a false identity and market themselves for remote IT work with unsuspecting companies.”
Alleged to have managed almost 900 “proxy” identities, Didenko provided proxy accounts on three freelance IT hiring platforms and for three separate money service transmitters all based in the U.S. Since July 2018, Didenko sent or received $920,000 in U.S. dollars.
Didenko, who was arrested in Poland on May 6th, is in the process of being extradited to the U.S. to be prosecuted. He is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit identity fraud, conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, operating as an unlicensed money transmitting business, and unlawful employment of aliens. If convicted he may face up to 67.5 years in prison.
Court documents allege that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has dispatched thousands of IT workers around the world in order to generate revenue for their weapons program while evading sanctions. The case is the largest of its type involving remote IT workers.
About the Author: Paula Gomes is a Tennessee resident and reporter for The Tennessee Conservative. You can reach Paula at paula@tennesseeconservativenews.com.
