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This isn’t a ripped-from-the-headlines new Netflix series. This really happened in a quiet neighborhood called Litchfield Park that’s about a 20-minute drive from Phoenix.
Christina Chapman, 50, looked like your average middle-aged suburban woman. But inside her humble home? A secret cyber ops center built to help North Korean IT workers buy equipment and tools for their military by infiltrating hundreds of U.S. companies.
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Christina Chapman, 50, of Litchfield Park, Ariz., set up a massive cyber operation that helped North Korean actors infiltrate U.S. companies. (Department of Justice)
That picture above was just a small part of her setup.
North Korean workers aren’t browsing LinkedIn or applying at Google, Amazon and Meta. They can’t. Sanctions block them from working for American companies, at least legally. So what do they do?
They steal real Americans’ identities, including names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and more. Then, they use them to pose as remote IT workers, slipping into U.S. companies under anyone’s radar.
But when companies send out laptops and phones to their “remote new hires”? Those devices can’t exactly be shipped to Pyongyang.
Enter Christina
Over the course of three years, Christina turned her suburban home into a covert operations hub for North Korea’s elite cybercriminals.
She received more than 100 laptops and smartphones shipped from companies all across the U.S. These weren’t no-name startups. We’re talking major American banks, top-tier tech firms and at least one U.S. government contractor.
All thought they were hiring remote U.S.-based workers. They had no idea they were actually onboarding North Korean operatives.
Once the gear arrived, Chapman connected the devices to VPNs, remote desktop tools like AnyDesk and Chrome Remote Desktop, and even rigged up voice-changing software.
The goal? To make it seem like the North Koreans were logging in from inside the United States. Chapman also shipped 49 laptops and other devices supplied by U.S. companies to locations overseas, including multiple shipments to a city in China on the border with North Korea.
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Chapman’s fake employees “showed up” from halfway around the world every day, siphoning American cash and technology directly into the Kim regime. (Department of Justice)
Follow the money
These fake employees “showed up” every day, submitting code, answering emails, taking meetings, all from halfway around the world. In reality, they were siphoning U.S. tech and cash straight into Kim Jong Un’s regime.
When HR teams requested video verification, Chapman didn’t blink.
She jumped on camera herself, sometimes in costume, pretending to be the person in the résumé. She ran the whole operation like a talent agency for cybercriminals, staging fake job interviews, coaching the operatives on what to say and even laundering their salaries through U.S. banks.
Her take? At least $800,000, paid as “service fees.”
The total haul for North Korea? Over $17 million in stolen salaries, according to the FBI, which called the scheme a national security threat. Chapman called it “helping her friends.” Really.
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North Korea netted over $17 million in stolen salaries, courtesy Chapman’s scheme. (REUTERS/Edgar Su)
Eventually, the scam began to unravel. Investigators noticed odd patterns like dozens and dozens of remote hires all listing the same Arizona address, or company systems being accessed from countries the workers supposedly had never visited.
Chapman was arrested and sentenced in July 2025 to 102 months in federal prison.
And the wildest part? She did it all from her living room. Talk about working from home!
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