How an Arizona woman helped North Korean workers infiltrate US companies

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This isn’t a ripped-from-the-headlines new Netflix series. This actually happened in a quiet neighborhood called Litchfield Park, about a 20 minute drive away from Phoenix.

Christina Chapman, 50, looked like your average middle-aged suburban woman. But in her humble home? A secret cyber operations center built to help North Korean IT workers purchase equipment and tools for their military by infiltrating hundreds of US companies.

A woman learns her fate after the U.S. Justice Department admitted in a guilty plea that she helped North Korean technology workers infiltrate U.S. companies

Christina Chapman, 50, of Litchfield Park, Arizona, launched a massive cyber operation that helped North Korean actors infiltrate U.S. companies. (Ministry of Justice)

The picture above was just a small part of their setup.

North Korean workers don’t search LinkedIn or apply on Google, Amazon and Meta. You can’t. Sanctions prevent them, at least legally, from working for American companies. So what do they do?

They steal the identities of real Americans, including names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and more. They then pose as remote IT employees and sneak into US companies unnoticed.

But when companies ship laptops and phones to their “remote new hires”? These devices cannot necessarily be shipped to Pyongyang.

Enter Christina

Over the course of three years, Christina transformed her suburban home into a covert operations center for North Korea’s elite cybercriminals.

She received more than 100 laptops and smartphones from companies across the United States. These were not no-name startups. We’re talking major American banks, blue-chip tech companies, and at least one U.S. government contractor.

Everyone thought they would hire US-based remote workers. They had no idea they were actually on board North Korean Employees.

Once the equipment arrived, Chapman connected the devices to VPNs, remote desktop tools like AnyDesk and Chrome Remote Desktop, and even set up voice-changing software.

The goal? To give the impression that the North Koreans are logging in from the United States. Chapman also shipped 49 laptops and other devices supplied by U.S. companies to locations abroad, including several shipments to a city in China on the border with North Korea.

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Chapman’s fake employees “showed up” every day from the other side of the world and pumped American money and technology directly into the Kim regime. (Ministry of Justice)

Follow the money

These fake employees “showed up” every day, submitted codes, answered emails, attended meetings – all from the other side of the world. In reality, they pumped US technology and money directly into Kim Jong Un’s regime.

When HR teams requested video verification, Chapman didn’t blink.

She jumped in front of the camera herself, sometimes in costume, and pretended to be the person on the resume. She ran the entire operation like a talent agency for cybercriminals, staging fake job interviews, coaching employees on what to say, and even laundering their salaries through U.S. banks.

Your opinion? A minimum of $800,000 paid as “Service Fees.”

The total loot for North Korea? According to the FBI, more than $17 million in payroll was stolen, and the FBI called the scheme a threat to national security. Chapman called it “helping her friends.” Really.

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North Korea reaped over $17 million in stolen salaries thanks to Chapman’s plan. (REUTERS/Edgar Su)

Eventually the fraud began to be exposed. Investigators began noticing strange patterns, such as dozens and dozens of remote workers all providing the same information Arizona addressor access to company systems from countries that the workers supposedly had never visited.

Chapman was arrested in July 2025 and sentenced to 102 months in federal prison.

And the wildest part? She did everything from her living room. Talk about working from home!

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