LITTLE LAPTOP MAN

Cancer Carer Scammed Millions for Kim Jong Un From Suburban Home

Christina Chapman convinced 300 companies she was giving them remote workers to get their cash.

An American woman has been jailed for eight years for scamming millions of dollars for North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s regime in an elaborate fraud. Christina Chapman, 50, from Litchfield Park, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, conned 300 companies by providing them with remote workers they thought were 68 genuine American workers—but who were actually North Koreans using stolen identities. She pleaded guilty in February and was sentenced Thursday to eight years in court in D.C. In total, federal prosecutors said, the communist dictatorship took $17 million from 300 American companies, some of them on the Fortune 500 list. The unnamed companies were described as including a car maker, a “media and entertainment company,” a Silicon Valley firm, and a luxury retailer. The fake IT workers even targeted two federal agencies. Chapman laundered the work and the con by “hosting” 90 laptops in her suburban home. The American companies sent their laptops to her home, believing that was the address for the genuine Americans. She then set them up to be operated remotely from North Korea. Acting U.S. Attorney for Washington D.C. Jeanine Pirro—the former Fox News host known as “Judge Jeanine”—said the victims were “quintessential American companies.” The case is among the country’s largest North Korean IT scams. Chapman claimed she took on the job to afford treatment for her cancer-ridden mother, according to court documents.