1. Five individuals have pleaded guilty to assisting North Koreans in defrauding U.S. companies by posing as remote IT workers, earning millions for Kim Jong Un's regime.
2. The accused individuals acted as "facilitators," using their own identities or fake ones to help North Koreans get jobs and access company-issued laptops. This affected over 136 U.S. companies.
3. The guilty pleas are part of a long-standing effort by American authorities to disrupt North Korea's cybercrime activities, which have been used to fund its nuclear weapons program. The DOJ also announced the freezing and seizure of more than $15 million in cryptocurrency stolen by North Korean hackers from crypto platforms in 2023.