Americans Sentenced for Running Laptop Farms for DPRK
🔒 Two U.S. nationals, Matthew Isaac Knoot and Erick Ntekereze Prince, were each sentenced to 18 months in prison for operating laptop farms that enabled North Korean IT workers to fraudulently obtain remote employment at nearly 70 U.S. companies. Authorities say the defendants used stolen identities and remote desktop software to mask foreign workers as U.S.-based employees, resulting in substantial payroll fraud and remediation costs. Courts imposed prison terms, forfeitures, and restitution as part of a broader federal effort to disrupt North Korea's illicit revenue operations.