Arizona Woman Sentenced for Laptop Farm Scheme Benefiting North Korea

PHOENIX, Arizona – An Arizona woman was sentenced to 102 months in prison on Thursday for running a laptop farm that aided North Koreans in stealing American identities to obtain remote IT jobs at U.S. companies. Christina Chapman of Litchfield Park, 50, participated in a scheme that generated over $17 million in illegal revenue for herself and the North Korean regime.

U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss ordered Chapman to serve the lengthy prison term after the Department of Justice described her actions as “one of the largest North Korean IT worker fraud schemes” ever charged. The operation spanned from October 2020 to October 2023.

The Department of State, Treasury, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed that the scheme involved the identities of 68 Americans and spanned over 300 U.S. companies, including Fortune 500 firms. The fraudulent operations included attempts to gain employment at government agencies, such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Chapman established the laptop farm at her home to trick companies into believing that employees were working on U.S. soil. In addition, she exported dozens of laptops and other tech equipment to a city on the Chinese-North Korean border. In October 2023, authorities seized more than 90 company devices during a search of her home.

Chapman was contacted by an unknown conspiracy member via LinkedIn in 2020, who asked her to be the “U.S. face” for their operation. Her defense attorneys argued that she did not initially grasp the illegality of her actions but proceeded to commit fraud to help pay for her mother’s cancer treatment.

In a letter to the judge, Chapman expressed remorse: “I dealt with identity theft myself and it took me 17 years to recover from the damage it caused me. Knowing that I had a part in causing that kind of stress and suffering for others makes me feel deeply ashamed.”

The DOJ has been investigating various ways North Korea defrauded American businesses to fund their operations. Officials have executed searches of numerous suspected laptop farms across 16 states, resulting in the seizure of various bank accounts used for laundering illicit funds.