Two U.S. nationals were sentenced to 18 months in prison Wednesday for running laptop farms that helped North Korea’s remote IT worker scheme, according to a Justice Department press release. The scheme touched nearly 70 U.S. companies and generated about $1.2 million for the North Korean regime.
KEY FACTS
- Defendants Matthew Issac Knoot of Tennessee and Erick Ntekereze Prince of New York.
- Method They hosted company-issued laptops at their residences and used remote desktop tools to hide the workers’ locations.
- Impact Their separate schemes affected almost 70 U.S. companies.
- Penalties Prince was ordered to forfeit $89,000, and Knoot was ordered to pay restitution and forfeit money tied to his take.
Prince’s company Taggcar supplied IT workers to victim companies from June 2020 through August 2024. He pleaded guilty in November 2025 to wire fraud conspiracy after years of involvement in the scheme.
Knoot was arrested in August 2024, a year after the FBI searched his home. Officials said he made false and misleading statements and destroyed evidence to obstruct the investigation. Victim companies paid North Korean workers linked to his laptop farm more than $250,000 from July 2022 to August 2023.
The workers transferred those funds to Knoot and accounts tied to North Korean and Chinese nationals, according to the disclosure. Federal prosecutors said the broader operation used U.S.-based facilitators, forged or stolen identities and laptop farms to let North Korean operatives pose as legitimate remote employees.
Authorities have been seizing cryptocurrency linked to the theft and pursuing facilitators in the United States as part of a wider crackdown. The disclosure said the scheme has reached an unknown number of businesses, including hundreds of Fortune 500 companies.
WHY IT MATTERS
The cases show how North Korea’s remote-work fraud can turn unwitting U.S. companies into revenue sources for a sanctioned government. They also highlight the risk posed by local facilitators who help disguise overseas workers inside corporate hiring systems.