How an Arizona woman helped North Korean workers infiltrate US companies

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

Christina Chapman, 50, looked like a middle-aged suburban woman. But in his 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 U.S. companies.

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

This photo above was just a small part of his setup.

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

They steal Americans’ real identities, including their names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and more. Then, they use them to pose as remote IT professionals, slipping into American companies under everyone’s radar.

But when do companies send laptops and phones to their “new remote hires”? These devices can’t exactly be shipped to Pyongyang.

Enter Christine.

Over three years, Christina transformed her suburban home into a secret operations center for elite North Korean cybercriminals.

She received more than 100 laptops and smartphones from companies across the United States. These were not faceless startups. We’re talking big U.S. banks, leading tech companies, and at least one U.S. government contractor.

All were thinking of hiring US-based remote workers. They didn’t know that they were actually integrating North Korean agents.

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

The goal? To make it appear as if the North Koreans were tuning in from the United States. Chapman also shipped 49 laptops and other devices supplied by U.S. companies to overseas destinations, including several shipments to a city in China on the border with North Korea.

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

Follow the money

These fake employees “showed up” every day, submitting code, responding to emails, taking meetings, all from the other side of the world. In reality, they were siphoning American technology and money directly into Kim Jong Un’s regime.

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

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

His opinion? At least $800,000, paid in “service fees”.

The total spoils for North Korea? More than $17 million in wages stolen, according to the FBI, which called the scheme a threat to national security. Chapman called it “helping your friends.” Really.

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North Korea recovered more than $17 million in stolen wages, thanks to Chapman’s scheme. (Edgar Su/Reuters)

Eventually, the scam began to unravel. Investigators noticed strange patterns, like dozens and dozens of remote hires all listing the same address in Arizona, or company systems accessed from countries the workers supposedly never visited.

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

And the craziest? She did it all from her living room. Talk about working from home!

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