The US Department of Justice last week announced that it charged a Nashville man for running what it called a “laptop farm” out of his home and being part of a vast conspiracy that connects North Korean tech workers with jobs at large American and British companies looking for remote employees. According to the FBI, the salaries paid to the IT workers – who were doing real work – were illegally funnelled to North Korea to fund its illicit weapons programmes. Matthew Isaac Knoot, 38, allegedly helped the IT workers, who were North Korean nationals living there, Russia or China, by using his residence to host numerous laptops.
He is also accused of stealing the identity of a man in Georgia who authorities identified as “Andrew M”. Through Knoot the North Korean tech workers used Andrew M’s driver’s license and identity to get well-paying contract jobs at American companies, authorities alleged. After the tech workers got the remote-work jobs, Knoot had companies ship work laptops to his address in of Nashville, Tennessee, according to the DOJ.
He would then log in, install remote desktop applications, and then access company networks. The remote desktop app disguised the location of the North Korean IT workers living abroad, so that it looked like they were working at Knoot’s Nashville address under Andrew M identity, authorities said. Knoot would also launder the tech workers' salaries – some as high as US$300,000 (RM1.
32mil) a year, authorities said – an.