Federal agents searched more than 40 homes in Texas last month and carted off computers that officials say let North Korean workers pose as Americans and collect paychecks from U.S. companies, with more than 100 of the laptops seized in North Texas alone.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas and the FBI's Dallas field office detailed the operation, which they called Operation Lone Star Round-Up, at a news conference Tuesday. No one has been arrested from the North Texas searches yet, but officials said charges are coming.
"In North Texas alone, we seized more than 100 laptops," Joseph Rothrock, special agent in charge of FBI Dallas, said, according to NBC 5.
How the scheme works
Officials described the computers as "laptop farms." North Korean IT workers use fake or stolen identities to land remote jobs, often as software engineers or web developers, and the company-issued laptops are shipped to homes in the United States.
People paid to host them keep the machines online, often with devices that let someone abroad control several computers at once, so the work appears to be done from inside the country.
Citing a U.S. Treasury estimate, U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould put the scheme's take for North Korea at more than $800 million in fiscal 2024, money he said helps pay for its weapons programs. Rothrock said the North Korean state keeps an estimated 85% to 90% of what the workers earn.
Raybould said people who knowingly hosted the computers should expect to be indicted. "It's very hard to claim you didn't know what you were doing when you're hosting 30, 40, 50 laptops in your house," he said, according to CBS News Texas.
The Justice Department said about 187 laptops and other devices tied to more than 70 companies were seized in the overall investigation, which also included action in Ohio, and it announced charges against two U.S. citizens. The searches in Texas took place Sept. 21-25, according to the department.
