Ep. 3: The Americans

Some belong to hackers, some to whistleblowers, some to spies, many to victims.

People who didn't even know they've been pulled into the story until I showed up. But for all I know, the person behind this next door could be any of the above. When I produced her and I are driving to the home of a young woman we believe as hosting

“laptops for North Koreans, does she know who she's working for?”

I have no idea. That's what we're here to find out. Okay, so we are driving through Cincinnati on our way to the home of Lexi who's hosting laptops for these fake North Korean IT workers and it's a freezing cold or snow on the ground. And it appears that she lives at her grandfather's house or hoping that the lengths

are the door and talk to us, but we have low expectations here. One else, I'm sure.

Oh, in his car's here soon, all right, we're going to go try our best here.

Hope for the baths or the wild scenario, we're in. Hello. I'm Nicole Pearlarath and this is to catch a thief. It was actually the North Koreans who led us to Lexi. She was one of a handful of Americans who surfaced in their back-channel communications on Discord.

Remember, nieces deliberately hired a North Korean operative as an AI developer. They shipped him a laptop, placed it with spyware, flipped on the camera, and found themselves sitting in the back of a closet, surrounded by other laptops. It's what the FBI calls a laptop farm. And those who track this for a living estimate that there could be anywhere from 75 to

200 laptop farms operating across the country. And by Americans who, knowingly or unknowingly, are hosting laptops for North Korea. And yet, we know almost nothing about them. Here's nieces is right in the cell.

“I think if we go back to like, what's the big thing that people need to take away here?”

The first takeaway is there are thousands of people who are trying to rob US companies

of payroll. And the second thing is there are hundreds of Americans who were having to help them. They call them natives. My native, like going back to the colonialism, that's how they referred to the Americans who have the laptop farms.

Who are these people? And what brings them to the point where they're happy to host multiple companies property in their house and defraud those companies in our country and circumvent sanctions? The only way to answer these questions was to meet one of these Americans' feasts to face. But finding someone who wasn't going to pull a gun out on me, presented something of a challenge.

Yeah, so we've got one in Texas, one in Florida, one in Nebraska, one in Ohio.

“You said Nebraska's a closest to you, but I don't know that any of those are a place”

I would go with that some sort of protection. Yeah. And what do we know about this facilitator? Not much, actually. That's one of the individuals who has was arrested.

I know that for sure. For breaking an entering of them to theft. Okay. And they definitely... The guy in Florida has also been arrested for theft. The person in Cincinnati is a woman.

So you might have a lower chance of maybe by just our own internal bias. You may have a lower chance of getting a job out of them. This was the process of elimination that brought us to Lexi's doorstep. The North Koreans repeatedly mention Lexi in their chats. They called her their Ohio native and confirmed they'd paid her to host at least a couple

laptops and then incredibly they dropped her name in address, which is where we're headed now. For someone at the center of a transnational cyber fraud operation, Lexi barely exists online. For what we can gather, she lives in a duplex with her grandfather, Ken.

So, we haven't been able to find a ton about her on social media. She hasn't linked in profile with no picture on it. It looks like she did have a Facebook profile and she's young, she's 21. So I'll be curious to know how they found her. She's not someone who seems that online.

We're only a week out from ICE agents killing Alex Pretty, an American ICU nurse in Minneapolis. I want to say that this door knock-and-talk couldn't be happening at a worse time. So, sadly, people are not really down to what strangers under their house right now. People are on edge, which makes what we're about to do, fraught, hence the security detail. Are you armed, Dennis?

Hey, it's my smart girl to lock something. We're pulling down the street, and it's pretty much like you would picture any street in America, she's Cincinnati, we're looking at row after row of squat break houses. Some more run down the others. We find the right house member and make our way through ankle deep snow up the steps to

the door where ironically, given the circumstances, we're met with a god bless America sign. So, here we go. It does look like someone's home. I see the walker, I just know just the up door now. Go away.

Right.

Finally, someone answers.

Hi, starting our up. This is Rebecca and Nicole. We are doing some research on laptop firms. I'm sorry, it's bedtime. Okay.

We're in the right spot.

“We're looking for the (beep) downstairs, would you see L?”

Oh, okay. We knock and knock, but no one answers. It's freezing cold, so we returned to the car and try the phone numbers. We tracked down for Lexi and her family. You call that's been forwarded to voicemail.

That's a talent. Oh, please. We're going to message. Hi, Ken.

This is Nicole Prolaroth.

We stopped by her house today. We are hoping to talk to Lexi or Alexis. Eventually, I decide to leave an old fashion note. And just isn't keeping it to the door, the neighbor from before, pops his head out. Oh, honey.

We call up there telling you out here. Oh, you, you can call it? I got to talk to you. I talked to Keny. Oh, good.

One note and he's going to come down. Thank you. Hey, Keny, I'm standing here with her now.

“Oh, you would you like your walk in the hall to you come down?”

I don't like that, I don't like it. Hi, Ken.

I'm so sorry to bother you.

We were looking for Alexis. We have some information about some laptops that she was sent and some questions about the sender. Ken agrees to come down. Shuffling behind him is our North Korean facilitator, Lexi, or as her grandfather calls her,

Alexis. Hi, Alexis. Hi, Alexis. Hi, Alexis. I'm Nicole.

This is Rebecca. I'm going to tell you. I'm going to tell you. I'm going to tell you. I'm going to make you come down and out of the way.

So, hi, we're trying to reach you. Yeah. I don't know what's going on. Yeah, sure. So, we're trying to ring the doorbell.

Sorry. It's nice. Okay. Okay. I'm trying to like barge into your house.

I don't want to make you uncomfortable. I just sit down here with you. Describing what exactly we're doing here is a bit of a mouthful. I'm a cybersecurity journalist. And we had been researching these laptop firms and laptops that are getting sent to

American's homes, they're coming from North Korea. So we wanted to call and find out if you had any information about where these laptops had come from. We were able to track some of their internal communications show that they were sending them to you.

We're now standing in a stairwell with Lexi and Ken. Maybe it's her Hello Kitty shirt, pajamas shorts, and bare feet, but Lexi looks a lot younger than 21. She's a kid. It could be the fact we've just spoken her up from an app, but I got to say, she doesn't

sound nearly as shocked as you'd expect someone to be, especially when they learn they're part of a global North Korean labor fraud scheme. And so we didn't know if you knew anything about this or did they identify themselves? No, they didn't. Who did they say they were?

“They said they were working for a program, that's what they said.”

Did you have any idea of these people, my big shady? Okay, where? There's money. Yeah, where? That's what gets her out.

I know that much, but my brain knows that. Okay, so we're on this ability. So we're living in danger at the danger. I can't find a draw-up, so it's hard, and I want to help all the best I can, and I have

I like to buy her a gift, so.

How old are your little sister? She is.

“I think she's around the exact same year, too.”

How do they find your originally on my 10? Right. From what we've gathered so far, North Koreans are finding their facilitators on reddit, especially subreddits of people looking for gig work or quick cash. But according to Nesos, they're also recruiting them off-gamer platforms, even the occasional

porn site. We did see one mention that they were using chatterbait as one of the channels to find people. I'm not sure how you approach someone who might want to be an IT there, but maybe there's a big crossover in that demographic I don't know.

These North Koreans do have an ideal candidate.

Based on what Nesos gleaned from their discord chatter, they look for young American men.

College graduates and young professionals, looking for a side hustle, a way to pay off their student debt, or just a foothold into a career in tech. But plenty of the Americans North Korea's recruiting for this work are just people who, for whatever reason, can't get work. Maybe because they have a criminal background, or they just don't have the right skills

or experience. But all these facilitators have in common is that they're desperate for cash. Here's Nesos's Ben Reesonburg. So these individuals weren't read at saying that they need money, that they're really poor, and they've been trying to get people to loan them money.

So the operator got in contact with the person and said, you know, I might have an idea for you of a job, but we need to take this conversation off-read it into discord to have a further conversation on what we can do together and how we work. So in our network that was foreign individuals, all across the US, they were facilitators already.

We've also seen them have conversations, would you mind housing laptops, and then people freaking out and saying, this sounds illegal, this is not something I want to do, and I don't need money that bad. We've seen ones that said, that sounds a little fishy, but you know what, I need money really bad, so I'm okay with them.

So far Lexi's story lines up beat for beat. She was young, introverted, online, and desperate need of cash, and from what we can tell, not someone who's going to ask too many questions. Where did they claim to be from? I think they said it overseas.

At any point, did you figure out who are these people? No.

“It was just, I was looking online for help to get money, and that's how they go.”

So they reached out to you, and then what was the ask? They said, it was like, I need help with programming, and I want to send a laptop to your house, and I just want to pay for your life, I mean, that's what they said. How many laptops have they asked you to host two letters, and they want it more and more. How many did you have to set it up for them?

You have to put it on a, it's like this application that lets them control it from their laptop. Okay, like a remote desktop, but you have to download that. Yeah. Are they inside your laptop?

No, no, no, no, no, no, just these laptops, like a corporation will send you a laptop, and you'll just plug it in for them, and do they ask you to connect it to a VPN, or they do everything on the back end? They do everything on the back end today. They speak English well, and they spoke pretty well, yeah.

We're only getting bits and pieces, but Ken's interjections start to pain a clearer picture. We have had hearing. Riders, you write. What are you writing? Just fantasy stories.

I've raised them. I've been writing. Yeah. I have her. She, believe not.

She could, but she's at the hospital and she's born.

“I could put her in both my hands, and that's how long I've had her.”

Yeah. And her health shall help you. I'm a grand honor. I said, she can probably show you everything she's got, I mean, she's, she's good, she's good. Yeah.

Are they? If it's for a country, she's on the voucher. It's a bit hard to catch Ken there, but he said, if it's for our country, she'll do it. At this point, the absurdity of our situation starts to set in, we're standing in a stairwell explaining a North Korean employment fraud scam to a 21-year-old girl in a Hello Kitty

T-shirt. While her stunned and clearly patriotic grandfather tries to take it all in, my producer and I exchanged lenses. We decided to give them some time to digest all of this and call it for the night. And then ask if it'd be okay if we come back for a proper sit down tomorrow.

They agree.

But that night, we agonized over whether there'd even be a second interview.

There was a good chance Lexi would google North Korean laptops, read the headlines, and

Because there was one name, she was almost certain to find, Christina Chapman.

“A valid woman is accused of helping the North Korean government avoid sanctions and bringing”

millions for the country's weapons program. According to the Department of Justice, Christina Chapman operated a laptop farm from her home. Between October 2020 and 2023, Chapman is said to have helped North Korean IT workers secure stolen identities of U.S. citizens and residents, using those to get them remote jobs

with U.S. companies. Whatever ignorance or confusion Christina Chapman claimed, it didn't spare her from what happened next. The indictment was unsealed this week, alleging that 49-year-old Christina Chapman helped

North Korea plant people at prominent companies across the country.

Chapman is charged with nine counts, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government. A Christina Chapman of Arizona was sentenced to 102 months of imprisonment for conspiring

“with North Koreans to infiltrate U.S. companies, including Fortune 500 companies, with”

a goal of creating revenue to send to North Korea for their munitions development. A federal judge has sent in Christina Chapman to eight and a half years in prison for her role in a fraudulent scheme that assisted North Korea and generated income for their nuclear weapons program. Last year, Christina Chapman pled guilty to conspiracy, identity theft, and many laundering.

And while she's the most public case, she's hardly an anomaly. Without these American facilitators, North Korea's IT worker scheme doesn't work, because they're not here.

They need Americans to host their corporate laptops and more.

In the beginning, North Koreans would spin up their own LinkedIn accounts, but once companies grew wise to their ways, the North Koreans switched to hack. They started compromising real Americans linked in accounts, even pulling their social security numbers off the dark web, and using their identities to apply for jobs. But these days, they're approaching Americans to loan out their linked in accounts, even

asking them to cash their paychecks, set up bank accounts. In some cases, they've asked them to show up for in-person job interviews, even take drug tests, all in exchange for a small fee. And Ms. Chris Wong, I was with the FBI for 10 years, most of that time working against North Korea.

OK, I want to start with Americans' role in all of this. Talk to me about the range of people that are getting caught up in this. By and large, when people are working remotely these days, you're going to have a company laptop. And the company might have certain controls in place so that they can make sure that you

are where you say you are. They're not going to ship the laptop to China or to North Korea or to Russia.

“If you've told them you're in Georgia, that's just not going to happen, right?”

And then there's going to be payment processes that the North Korean needs to set up. And all of this needs to look, at least to the company that's hiring them, as somewhat legitimate. Like, oh, you have a bank account at this small community bank. You have asked for your laptop to be shipped to the certain location, and all of that fits

within their HR profile. But the North Korean is not there, so we have to find ways to make this happen, which is where you start running into like a 21-year-old who's looking to earn an extra $200 a month or an extra $50 a month, because maybe I'm in college. This is an easy job because all I do is leave that thing there and it's like passive income.

And by the way, a 21-year-old's probably not expecting to be contacted by North Korean IT workers to do that. Which brings us back to our 21-year-old facilitator, Lexi. After a sleepless night in Cincinnati, we wake up and grab coffee. Snow has blinketed everything over a night.

We meet up with our security detail, and head out for our scheduled sit-down with Lexi and Ken. But, or pretty convinced, there's no way they're going to let us back in. Two are surprised, Lexi opens the door and waves us inside. We follow her at the stairs and pass through her living room where her grandmother's

watching TV smoking cigarettes on the couch. A little taken aback when they tell me she's very ill. They guide us toward the dining room, and as we sit down at a warm wooden dining table, I realized we're surrounded by Americana, American flags, bald eagles, there's patriotic knickknacks everywhere.

And can I ask how you lost your leg?

They said it had a rare disease called charcoal, and I don't know if it's the bones, it dissolves your bones and your foot. That's how I started. I had four broken bones in my foot, and didn't even know it. And they just collapsed.

Do you have any idea how you broke them? No, I just, I was eating the front yard, and I just collapsed on the ground, and that's

“the only thing I can remember, it all started from there.”

Now, I lost my kidneys as a duller store. That's from the antibiotics I believe they gave me from a leg that destroyed my kidneys. So, and they were giving me some strong antibiotics too. They threw the IV in everything, and I don't even want to tell it that it was a nightmare in the hospital.

I ask about the American flags and eagle figurines. Ken tells us he collects them, he's a proud American. He tells us everything he knows about North Korea came from his father. He passed away, but he told me a lot about Korea, because he was in Korea. Is he in the Korean War?

Yeah, he was in the Korean War? Yeah.

“In any other room, in any other context, this might have been an ordinary family detail,”

but given why we're all here, it lands differently. The Lexi from the stairwell last night was guarded, nervous, almost monosolabic. But sitting across for me now, she sounds different, like she spent the night thinking about what she would say, maybe even rehearsing it. She immediately dives into her explanation.

Not as unwilling a complicit North Korea, but as a broke isolated kid who got pulled into something she didn't fully understand. I'm really trying to get a job. It's hard because I have really, really bad souls on diety, and I freeze up when I try to talk to people that's my problem.

It was just, I'm looking for some jobs to get some money to help around my family, because like I said, last night we struggled badly, especially in the end in the month. It could be rationalization or self-preservation, or maybe she is exactly the type of person these operations are designed to prey upon. It's really hard for us, especially with my grandpa, he lost his leg, his kidneys, and

he's the only one that drives and my grandma lost her here in, and it's just me and my little sister, you know, and I have a lot of problems in the head, because my mom, she left and I was really young, and it messed me up, but I was trying to get some money because I can draw, I can write, and I want to use that talent, and they messages me all for that, and it really looks they just took advantage of that.

As Lexi talks, it's easy to forget that hosting a laptop isn't some harmless side hustle, and it's not just a crime, it's helping fund a foreign adversaries' nuclear program, but we also made the decision to believe Lexi's last name, because despite some very questionable

choices here, she appears to be a victim too, drawn into an identity scam she never fully

understood. I asked Lexi to tell us how the North Korean Scott tour in the first place. So maybe it makes sense to back up, I would just start with Reddit, do you spend a lot time on Reddit? No, it really, it's not really my place, I just really want to try and get some little

work to do, and that's where it approached me. Is there a name of the Reddit channel? I think one of them is like, "Get money now." Yeah, like that or pocket money online, like that. But your post was like, yeah, but they drive, or just anything really, so that I get

“this, that's why they said, 'cause the anything part?”

Lexi had posted that she would do anything online for quick cash, and she mentioned she draws. She gets out our phone and pulls up one of the drawings she sold on Reddit for 20 bucks. It's a really sweet anime character.

Yeah, her, she's like, feeling like first.

She tells that she dreams of publishing a book about her anime creations. What she was in so, they used to tell me, they used to call a nickname or the writer, because she was always writing.

The Reddit post, the track-to-guy, Lexi calls the recruiter.

He asks if they can take their chat to Discord, and for a while, they chat about everything but laptops. It's clear he was trying to build a rapport. When you were just, he would just ask about my day and like, you know, all that stuff's like asking me questions, like, he seemed really interesting when I had to say really.

So, almost like, an internet buddy or something, and what kind of things would he ask you about? Like, I have screen shots right here. When I was talking about my dream as being a writer when I was trying to, he said, then that would be a long dream for you.

I want it to be a designer when I was a child. I'm doing programming now, but I love it.

“Did they share anything else about themselves and those early conversations?”

No? I think you sure was birthday with me. Oh, it was the year. I think you said he was like around my age. This recruiter claimed to be Japanese.

He sent her emojis, a lot of emojis. She called him darling. She confided about her family and their many troubles and once he'd earned her trust, he made the ask. Lexi was too shy to read their exchanges aloud, so you'll hear me reading them here.

Hey, so it says, all right, so now you understood what I want, right? Yes, Starling. Excellent. So in short, I would like you to rent me your internet connection and home address to start our collaboration.

I will guide you by end to end. What I'm going to be doing from now is I will be contacting you over here within one to two weeks, even before Christmas and we'll brought a new laptop to your home. Then you set up the laptop and allow me to access it remotely via any desk. If things go well, you will be having a monthly income.

It's currently estimated to 100 to 200 per month. As soon as the recruiter breached the laptop, his affect completely shifted, and that's all he would talk about. He told her she'd just need to sign for it, plug it in, download a free remote desktop tool, and an exchange.

Get a hundred bucks and crypto paid to her PayPal account every month. Did you ever get on the phone with these people? No, I always did. Did they ask to get on? Yes, they asked a lot, and I just said, I can't talk.

Okay.

“And did they say we'd like to send you more than one laptop?”

Yes, they said that a lot. And would they have offered more payment for me? Yes, so like I said, a hundred per laptop? And why would you do that? I just, I don't know, it's...

I just felt like something was fishy about it. Really? How many were they trying to get you to take? Oh, I don't know, they sent me two efforts. And then the first one broke, and they wanted to send more.

And they would ask you if they could send you more laptops. How did you phrase your reply? I said, I honestly said, I don't mind.

That's clearly what I said, but I just never sent them.

I'm glad they didn't, honestly. And did you have any concerns over what this was? Not really, I mean, I was a little concerned, but you know, I really wanted the, you know, the money, the family issues and all that stuff.

“And so you plug in these laptops, do they give you any instructions like you have to keep”

them open? Oh, keep it. Yeah, keep it on and plug in. They were able to control it when those clothes, which I don't understand. Okay.

And since you didn't know, these people were kind of worried when you were setting it up. And maybe there was someone watching you through the camera. Yeah. So did you put tape on the webcam or everything like that? Yeah.

Do you remember staying anything on the home screen when you first turned the computer on? I mean, it said Dustin Lee, Dustin name is said Dustin Lee. Dustin Lee Lexie showed us a picture of the login screen with Dustin Lee's name and we found what we believe is his LinkedIn page.

We reached out and never heard back so we can't be sure.

But as far as DPRK, IT worker profiles go, it tracks despite a long work history. His LinkedIn profile was only set up a couple months ago. It claimed to have had a three-year Stinnett Accenture, but Accenture confirmed it has no record of a destiny ever working there.

headshot, a VOIP number, and a long bio that was pretty clearly written by AI.

It's textbook. As Lexie is inspooling this bit by painful bit, I look over at Ken. It's clear he had zero idea which he's been up to. I ask her what she used the money for. She said it helped pay for the Wi-Fi bill, the occasional takeout and gifts.

She says she likes to buy her little sister small gifts. She likes the decorate room, that's her favorite thing, and I love to buy her that stuff, makes her happy.

“She likes lights, that's what her favorite thing is lights.”

After Lexie sets up the laptop, the recruiter sticks around for the next few weeks. Ken hands her off to a man he calls Jacob, but Lexie has an alternate name for Jacob. She calls him the mastermind. And this guy is a far cry from her sweet Japanese internet friend.

Again, you'll hear me reading his messages here.

So he says, "Okay, then let me chat. I don't care what you were doing with him. For now, you're my business partner. You have the laptop he sent you. And honestly, I've been using it for two months, and I've been in charge of the payment for you, smiley face.

So what your responsibility is, keep the current laptop available on the internet. And receive and keep the laptop available for the internet." What was your last correspondence with the original person? Yeah, I just said, "Are you all right?" And nothing back.

Nothing back. Her anime-loving Japanese friend goes to her. Everything that came next came from the mastermind. Jacob. And what do we know about Jacob or how did he present it from?

He said he was from Texas. That's where he took me. When you said, "You got that feeling that this was a little fishy." Yes. What point did that start to feel that way?

“I guess a little after, because I was like, "Why don't you need to use the internet”

when you're in America, right?" And I didn't like the way he talked. He was like, "Creepy, a little bit." Yeah. What kind of creepy?

Like, you know, I'm a young girl, and it's just like that kind of stuff, you know? Yeah. It's like the flurry stuff, yeah. Do you mind reading us any of those messages? I don't know if I have any of the flurry ones to kind of avoid it then.

Okay. I don't know if Lexi deleted these flurry messages, or she just doesn't want to read them in front of her grandfather. That kind of avoided is a bit of an understatement. Reading through Lexi's What's Up History shows Jacob calls her repeatedly.

Not only did she never pick up, she tells him she's non-verbal.

Okay. Hmm. You said, "I just can't use my voice. I assume you were trying to knock it on the phone." Yeah.

Okay. You said, "You know what a mute is." You just told him, like, "I can't talk," essentially. Okay. This doesn't stop.

It's good. From pushing Lexi to do more over-taxed. Do you know some people who meet this requirement, male 31 to 35, handy was online work and laptop, good network speed, work 8 to 5 CST, central time, at home remotely. No.

Sadly not. Hmm. Okay.

“I think it's safe to say the North Koreans didn't exactly pick the most enterprising”

laptop firmware with Lexi. Christina Chapman was getting paid an average of $4900 a month to host laptops. On the FBI raided her home in 2023, they seized 90 machines and incredibly Chapman documented match up this work on TikTok. I thought it was 30 and the morning.

That's what time I get. I started five 30, go straight to my office, which is the next door away from my bedroom. I'm going to start taking care of my clients. Computer business. Today is going to be a bit of an out-in-about day because I have a lot of errands to

run for clients. I got a bundle of prior earrings and I'm trying to wear a different pair each day.

Compared to Christina Chapman, the North Koreans probably saw Lexi as an underperformer.

“She broke the first laptop they sent her and was only making a hundred bucks a month”

to host a single corporate laptop. Until we knocked on her door last night. So after we left last night, tell us what you did to the house. I sat right here for a little bit just contemplating and doing research. That's what I did first.

And then I also, I fill out the FBI report because I'm a victim of this and I don't want to be like, you know, because I'm so young and I don't, I have a really with my life. And I don't want this money as you just feel like you don't real my life. What were you thinking?

I came in here and said we're looking into North Koreans' planting laptops.

Yeah, it was, it was scary. Did you know about the North Korean? No, not at all. The investigative journalist in me doesn't want to give her the benefit of the doubt. We're believed that people are just willingly hosting laptops for perfect strangers overseas.

But her story is not that uncommon. If you recall Cliff from the last episodes, the Sisso from one of the large staffing agencies who asked to remain anonymous, so we've given him a pseudonym and we're anonymizing his voice. Well, he told us he was actually able to track down one facilitator in Florida who

get this was a US military veteran. Not only did this guy not know he was working on behalf of North Korea, he didn't think there was anything wrong with hosting a laptop farm. He actually openly advertised his laptop services on his resume. At looked at the guy's resume, and darn if he didn't have laptop farm on his resume,

“he was touting that that's what he does.”

So fast forward when we talked to him. He had no idea he was doing something wrong. He was using the laptop in his own laptop farm, serving up other laptops. So he thought we're all legitimate. Had no idea that he was involved in something so sinister as what he was involved in and

was probably the most upset person that we've encountered. Then in a completely separate case, Cliff tried to recover a laptop from one of the North Koreans' staffing agency had placed. He reached out to the candidates' LinkedIn account. It turns out that account actually belonged to an American who was getting paid a thousand

dollars a month to lease out his LinkedIn account to North Korean workers. And I think everyone needs to hear this voice mail he left Cliff. Just to be super clear, these folks basically present any an opportunity to use my LinkedIn. And he was physically offering me a negotiation, so percentages of every project income.

“So every project he was able to close, union like 20% of team back, and then I think”

ask something like a thousand dollars in addition has like a base pay every month. This guy tells Cliff that all this talk of North Korea has him a bit stressed and reconsidering the line of work. I've also been opening myself maybe to other kinds of opportunities, like maybe the adult entertainment.

I recently have been discovering adult entertainment and that industry flows you to always

just be relaxed and fresh and behind-minded purpose message finds you in the warmest spirits. And I look forward to your response soon. Okay, here's where I think we need to step back. This season was supposed to be about North Korea, the remote IT workers, but the more I

dug in, the more I realize it's about us, America. It really hit me in Cincinnati that the long list of things we've yet to address here at home, income inequality, and affordable health care and employment. This loneliness and isolation many Americans are feeling, whether it's from social media or just the long tail of COVID, they all converged here in this one smoke-filled house covered

in American flags in Cincinnati. Where a young American can't find work lives off our grandfather's disability checks and is willing to look the other way for an extra 100 bucks a month. But once you start pulling on that thread, once you consider the US rise in long-term unemployment, once you think about the jobs AI will likely erase, and the people now

competing for work against a flood of perfectly AI written North Korean resumes, it gets

lot bigger. And this isn't just limited to Americans. Oh, they are everywhere. Heroic brainer interview with one of the researchers who's been tracking these facilitators around the globe, a poll-and-based researcher who asked to go by his online alias, black

big swan, or BBS for short. BBS has tracked down these facilitators all over the globe. There's also extremely a lot of Americans, but we get like a lot of Ukraine and facilitators Argentina is another growing hub. You can make $100 per day or something like this, and for a guy from Argentina who's currently

unemployed, who may be starting his developer journey, this sounds pretty good, and because he already has a relation with this North Korean through many different private chats, he's kind of a more trustworthy, that this will actually be a legitimate job, people just like try to take their chances online and North Koreans are waiting for it.

“Have you talked any of these facilitators one-on-one?”

Yeah, to some of them. And how many of them were not aware that they were operating at the behest of North Korea?

I say it's 50-50, like half of the people just is basically in need of money, and they

will take any job and ignore all of the potential repercussions, but if they will get new that this is North Korea and that this is a scam in the end, like a security threat, they wouldn't do it, but they just simply don't know. And there is the other half, which is trying to make a business out of it. I don't know if they are telling themselves a story that they are running a legitimate

business, just like maybe in a grey area of the market, or they just don't care. The most interesting is the guys who try to make a business out of it, because those guys they will tell themselves a story that they are businessmen, that this is all fine, that they are not doing anything illegal. They may even know that North Korea is doing it, but they will choose to ignore this fact.

They will just like assume that nothing bad will happen, that it's completely fine. I'm just giving them access to my PC. Okay, when you have reached out to these facilitators, and you have told them you are doing this on behalf of North Korea, and this is where the money goes.

“If the conversation is dotted in that far, what are the typical responses you've got in?”

Usually denial, like a full denial, sometimes threatening, asking how do we notice, how did we obtain this illegal data to quote one of those guys? Often, often, it's like just like trying to downplay the whole thing. Like those people may be in the next few weeks, they will try to delete this whole business, because they will get afraid of criminal charges or something.

But usually their first reaction is to basically ignore this.

Like to say that there's nothing wrong with that. I'm just doing business, it's a tech business, I'm a businessman, I pay my taxes, I don't think that we had a single case when we convinced one of those facilitators that what he's doing is wrong, like at best what they will do is they will get scared and try to delete it, but that's like the best case scenario.

And on this spectrum of total ignorance to winning a complice, where do you think Christina Chapman

“did? I think the case of Chapman was actually that she wasn't trying to make a business out of it.”

She was obviously motivated by economical gain, she needed money, but she wouldn't fall into the

type of this businessman we are often seeing, where they just basically don't give a hell about what

they are doing as they are getting paid. And they will continue to do it even if we tell them that this is North Korea. We reached out to Christina Chapman several times, but weren't able to secure an interview with her in prison, but we did speak to the person closest to her case, her attorney. Hi, I'm Alexis Gardner, I am a federal public defender in the federal defender's office for the District of Columbia. When I first received the case it was a high profile case and my first

thought was, honestly, she screwed. I mean, she's an unsophisticated woman without really any skills or talent to think of and really kind of a lonely person who I could see easily being taken

attention. She had a pretty big online following which I honestly surprised me. But like a lot of influencers, Christina was trying to paint a very specific picture of her life. I am sitting in an RV and I am in a long leads California. I'm so excited. I am very early to the location of the Rising Japan Music Festival. She would be talking about her like K-pop interest in her different like diet plans and stuff like that and then talking about kind of

her wells of life and then she did this boot camp. Christina found an IT boot camp online, a six-week course to help her find a job in the field. This is how Chapman herself described what happened next and an interview with Bloomberg. Towards the end of the course, I had gotten several different job offers and then we went into COVID. Most of the job offers went away with the exception

of one. The job offer came to me through LinkedIn and basically said that they wanted me to be

the face for their company. I would be the person between them and the clients. It was about building websites, maybe doing database work. They've reached out to her on LinkedIn like, "Hi, we see you're looking for a job. We have the perfect job for you. You could be the U.S.

“face of our company." And that's how their relationship started. By the time the red flags started”

showing up, Chapman was already in too deep. I felt sorry for her and that I realized, you know, she had gotten into more trouble than she, I think, conceptualized. She did think initially everything was above board until she started being asked to do things that weren't in the role that she thought she had taken on, like cash people's checks. I did that with the understanding that the people on the checks were somehow involved with the company. These were people that I trusted,

doubly trusted, but I still trusted them. You know, we're going to send the checks to you for you to cash. And it's like, "Oh, well, hold on. That's not what we talked about. Well, don't worry. We'll make it worth your while. We'll give you this much money for, you know, this percentage of each one." And when she was in, she was in. She wasn't just cashing North Korean's checks. She was picking up their corporate badges. You keep getting more into it and it's like, "Oh,

well, this badge requires someone to pick it up in person." So Denny needs to pick it up. And it's like,

“"Well, there is no Denny, so you need to go pick it up." And she's like, "Oh,”

there is no Denny." Well, so is that just a made-up person entirely or this? And it's like, you know, go pick it up. I mean, sometimes they answered her questions, frankly, like, "Oh, yeah, now that's just made-up." She made less than $160,000 off the whole thing. It's in my

sensing memo. Of course, they were like, "17.5 million dollars." And I'm like, "This woman didn't even

make 60 grand a year off this." Back in Ohio, I specifically asked Lexi if she'd read up on Christina Chapman. Before last night, before we came knocking on your door, did you have questions about the legality of all of this? Yeah. How did that come up? I don't know. I was sleeping when you guys came. So, I just woke up, and my mind was just all over, like, "What is this about?" So, had you read up on any of those in the news? Did you know any of

those news? I looked last night, I did. What kind of case this came up in your research? Um, it was really just, it was on Reddit, because that's where a lot of information is, because it was someone asking questions about it. And everyone in the comments was like, "You're going to go to jail. You're going to go to prison." It was scary. It made my anxiety

“spike, like, how people, like, in my position were arrested and stuff. And that's why I”

filled out the FBI report, because I wanted to show that I was a victim. And did you read at the case of Christina Chapman by any case? No. She was an Arizona, and she was hosting laptops for a

ton of YouTube on 16th. Yeah. And she was arrested, and that was the first time we saw this.

At this point, Ken jumps in? 60. Yeah. Yeah. Well, she was wearing a banquet, but it doesn't end well. Did y'all work on the FBI report together? Uh, I did it all now. I felt like I didn't want to call it like any more stress, you know. And when you were looking on the Reddit thread's last night, did you write anything, didn't you? No. But like I said, I don't like to

because I like last night turned off all the laptops, so he's probably like, one there was going on.

“Oh, do you mind reading? Um, oh, he just said hello.”

Lexi told us she was thrilled, but Ken worried that the North Koreans might still try to contact her. What do we do? She's, if they keep trying to get in touch with her then. You got to decide that for yourself. Yeah. Is there anything that we didn't ask you that you want to say? Hmm, not really. Like, I feel like I got out what really, really needed to be said.

“Good luck to find out where Ken from. Me too. Me too. Me too. As we shuffled out, it was”

hard not to think about how small the gap can be between an ordinary life and becoming part of a foreign nuclear funding operation. And harder still not to wonder how many more people are about to fall into that gap. The North Korean IT worker scheme may be one of the most ingenious sanctions of Asian operations ever constructed. American companies are knowingly funding the

“regime's weapons programs. American citizens are knowingly providing the infrastructure.”

But this ingenuity didn't appear out of nowhere. North Korea has been establishing new playbooks for more than a decade. And had we been paying closer attention? We might have seen this one coming. Instead, that North Korean caricature we cling to, clouded our judgment, which is ironic, because it was a Hollywood caricature of North Korea that put us in Pyongyang's

digital crosshairs in the first place. And so for years, we worked aimed in this space. What

will it look like if a rogue nuclear arm nation decides to attack the United States through cybermeats? And we did a lot of different scenarios. We did electrical grid and water grid and attack against missile systems and the our overall ability to communicate. So telecom,

we all got it wrong. And no one anticipated that the first time that that would happen would be

over a movie about pot smoking journalists with Seth Rogan in it. Returning to the hack that blindsided America and rewrote the playbook. That's next on to catch a thief. Follow to catch a thief to make sure you don't miss the next episode. And if you like what you hear, rate and review the show. To catch a thief is co-produced by mean, a cul-prolery, and rubric, in partnership with pod people, with special thanks to Julia Lee.