An Arizona woman, Christina Marie Chapman, 48, has entered a guilty plea in a case of wire fraud and identity theft that funneled more than $17 million to North Korea, as reported by the U.S. Department of Justice. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Columbia, Chapman admitted to colluding with IT workers between October 2020 and October 2023 to provide illegal staffing services at over 300 American companies by stealing and assuming the identities of U.S. citizens.

The court documents detailed that Chapman created an elaborate front, setting up a "laptop farm" in her Arizona home for these overseas IT workers allowing them to appear as if they were U.S.-based employees, effectively duping the U.S. companies and the Department of Homeland Security which was also given false documents, and all this deception allowed these workers to gain access to sensitive internal systems of the companies they were illegally working at. The scheme spanned multiple Fortune 500 corporations and numerous contracting organizations, affecting over 70 U.S. persons' identities and wrongfully implicating them in false tax liabilities, as per the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Chapman's sentencing is scheduled for June 16, 2025, with a proposed prison term of 94 to 111 months under the plea agreement; however, the official sentence will later be determined by U.S. District Court Judge Randolph D. Moss, taking into account federal guidelines and statutory factors. As part of her guilty plea, Chapman has admitted to her role in conspiracy to commit wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, as reported by the Justice Department.

The case is being prosecuted by a team of U.S. Prosecutors and a Trial Attorney from the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section with assistance from the National Security Cyber Section.