US sanctions North Korean IT worker network in Russia weeks after Texas laptop farm raids

The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) named 10 people and one company on a blacklist targeting a scheme to place fake North Korean IT workers inside American companies. The October 28 action targeted the Russia-based intermediaries responsible for funneling the North Korean IT workers’ crypto wages into cash for Pyongyang. The move freezes any assets the named people and company hold in the United States. It also makes it illegal for Americans to deal with them. OFAC targets Russians helping North Korea Two Russian nationals, Ilya Aleksandrovich Boykov and Vitold Viktorovich Obertas, were at the nerve center of the operation that OFAC targeted for swapping cryptocurrency into spendable funds for North Korean front companies. Reports attribute close to $2 million in crypto conversions to Obertas alone.

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