U.S. DOJ Pursues North Korea’s Illicit Money Machine, Seizes More Crypto

The U.S. Department of Justice rounded up several convictions in its pursuit of domestic helpers in schemes by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to pocket large amounts of cryptocurrency, and it also seized assets from cyber heists targeting crypto platforms, the department said in a Friday statement.

The five guilty pleas announced by the DOJ were connected to individuals that aided North Korea in getting U.S. jobs for fraudulent information-technology workers, obtaining stolen U.S. identities for the workers and helping mask their geographic origin as the IT employees pulled down paychecks from dozens of U.S. businesses. Probes conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation “continue to expose the North Korean government’s relentless campaign to evade U.S. sanctions and generate millions of dollars to fund its authoritarian regime and weapons programs,” said Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, in a statement. He urged companies to improve their vetting of remote workers to counter this trend.

The authorities have also been steadily seizing crypto assets from bad actors around the world, marking another $15 million in Tether’s USDT from North Korean sources on Friday. The assets are associated with cyber heists tied to the group known as Advanced Persistent Threat 38, which is allegedly connected to the North Korean military.Read More: North Korean Hackers Were Behind Crypto’s Largest ‘Theft of All Time’

Earlier this week, the DOJ and other federal agencies also announced a Scam Center Strike Force to target the centers of so-called pig-butchering scams, typically clustered in Southeast Asia and run by Chinese criminal organizations. The authorities said they’d seized another $80 million in stolen funds in that pursuit. Victims will be compensated from seized money, according to the DOJ.

What’s not yet clear is how much of these seized crypto funds will end up in the reserves President Donald Trump has sought to establish as a long-term investment for the U.S. government. His administration has been working to stand up a so-called bitcoin strategic reserve to hold all BTC taken in during criminal and civil forfeitures, and Trump also directed the creation of a separate reserve to hold all other digital assets. However, officials working on those reserves have suggested congressional action may be required to formally institute the plan.

Read More: No U.S. Bitcoin Reserve Plans as White House Touts Crypto Report