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The Tennessee Conservative [By Paula Gomes] –
A Nashville man was arrested on Thursday for his part in a scheme funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to North Korea.
Matthew Isaac Knoot, 38, allegedly helped generate revenue for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) weapon’s program, including weapons of mass destruction.
An advisory was published in 2022 alerting the international community, as well as public and private sectors about attempts by DPRK information technology (IT) workers to get hired overseas while posing as non-DPRK nationals. The information provided in the advisory outlined how these IT workers operate and identified red flags to help companies avoid hiring them as freelance developers.
This guidance was updated in October 2023 both the United States and Republic of Korea (South Korea) to alert potential employers of common tactics used by these freelancers such as unwillingness to appear on camera, inconsistencies between resumes and online profiles, preferring to speak Korean while claiming to be from a non-Korean speaking country, and many other issues.
The FBI also gave additional indicators to watch for earlier this year with regard to the use of laptop farms based in the United States.
Knoot is accused of assisting DPRK IT workers obtain employment with companies in the United States and Britain. Using the stolen identity of a U.S. citizen, Knoot hosted company laptops at his residences, downloading and installing software to facilitate access, and helped launder payments to the remote DPRK workers. These workers were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, money that was funneled to the DPRK for its weapons program.
Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said, “This indictment should serve as a stark warning to U.S. businesses that employ remote IT workers of the growing threat from the DPRK and the need to be vigilant in their hiring processes.”
Having sent thousands of IT workers to live abroad, primarily in China and Russia, the DPRK aims to avoid sanctions and deceive businesses worldwide into generating the revenue for weapons. In so doing, skilled workers in the United States have missed out on opportunities to earn high incomes, as much as $300 thousand a year. The scheme has been exceedingly lucrative for the DPRK, generating hundreds of millions of dollars.
Knoot’s laptop farm in Nashville ran for approximately a year between July 2022 and August 2023. The unauthorized remote desktop applications that Knoot installed on the laptops that were shipped to his residences damaged the computers and allowed the DPRK workers to work from China while appearing to be working from Nashville. Knoot was rewarded for his part in the scheme with a monthly payment for his services by someone going by “Yang Di” based abroad.
Each of the workers associated with Knoot’s laptop farm were each paid over $250 thousand during the time it was in operation before a court-authorized search was executed in early August 2023. This income was falsely reported to the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration in the name of a U.S. citizen whose identity had been stolen.
Knoot faces a maximum penalty of 20 years of incarceration if convicted, with a minimum of 2 years for aggravated identity theft. He is charged with conspiracy to cause damage to computers from the companies involved, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and launder monetary instruments, aggravated identity theft, and conspiring to cause the unlawful employment of aliens.
Earlier this year, Christina Marie Chapman, 49, of Arizona was also arrested for running laptop farms at her home, making Knoot the second U.S. citizen to be charged for the same crime.
Additionally, in May, two foreign students attending university in East Tennessee were arrested for participating in the same type of scheme linked to the DPRK after FBI agents searched residences in Jefferson City as part of a federal investigation to uncover laptop farms in the area.
One Response
Since we are now discussing North Korea, I want to say that the U.S. made a big mistake in 1950 in deciding to militarily intervene in what was a civil war between two halves of the Korean Peninsula. It was just as wrong as our intervention a few years later into Vietam.
To really make sense of the Korean War, one must understand the legacy of Japanese imperialism over the Korean Peninsula and Truman’s decision immediately after the Second World War to resume the U.S.’s pre-World War Two practice of favoring Japan over the Korean Peninsula. Truman, like General MacArthur, viewed the Japanese as honorary white people while viewing all Koreans, whether North or South, whether pro- or anti-Communist as a racially inferior people.
Neither of the two Koreas recognized the 38th Parallel as a legitimate border. Each regime of both Koreas viewed themselves as the sole legitimate ruler for the WHOLE peninsula. Prior to the summer of 1950, both Koreas constantly provoked one another, with most provocations coming from South Korea, believe it or not.
The legacy of the Korean Peninsula Civil War itself would lead to a pall mall rearmament in the U.S. that, in turn, would increase the temptation by a previously cautious Pentagon to join the even more hawkish State Department into plunging into other reckless foreign adventures after Korea: like Vietnam.
Both the Korean and Vietnam conflicts would end up tearing our country apart. Even now, we have not completely recovered from the wounds.
Both those wars were also Democrat-instigated wars.