Ukrainian sentenced to 5 years in prison for facilitating North Korean remote worker scheme
A Ukrainian national who ran multiple operations to aid the North Korean government’s expansive scheme to hire remote IT workers at U.S. companies was sentenced to five years in prison, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Oleksandr Didenko stole U.S. citizens’ identities and created more than 2,500 fraudulent accounts on freelance IT job forums, money service transmitters, email services, and social media platforms to sell the proxy identities to North Korean workers. The 29-year-old pleaded guilty to multiple crimes related to the six-year scheme in November 2025.
Didenko ran a site, upworksell.com, to sell the stolen identities and paid co-conspirators to receive and host laptop farms in Virginia, Tennessee and California, according to court records. He managed up to 871 identities through the laptop farms and helped North Korean technical workers gain employment at 40 U.S. companies.
Didenko funneled money from Americans and U.S. businesses into the coffers of North Korea’s hostile regime, Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said in a statement.
“Today, North Korea is not only a threat to the homeland from afar, it is an enemy within. By using stolen and fraudulent identities, North Korean actors are infiltrating American companies, stealing information, licensing, and data that is harmful to any business,” she added.
Officials said Didenko’s North Korean clients were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for their work, much of which was falsely reported in the names of U.S. citizens whose identities were stolen.
“Money paid to these so-called employees goes directly to munitions programs in North Korea,” Pirro said. “This is not just a financial crime; it is a crime against national security.”
In late 2023, following a request from one of his customers, Didenko sent a computer to a laptop farm run by Christina Chapman in Arizona, officials said. Chapman was arrested in May 2024 and sentenced to 102 months in prison for participating in the scheme.
Didenko’s site was seized following Chapman’s arrest. He was arrested by Polish police in late 2024, and later extradited to the United States.
Didenko pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft, and agreed to forfeit more than $1.4 million as part of his sentencing. He was also ordered to pay almost $47,000 in restitution.
U.S. law enforcement has racked up some wins by seizing stolen cryptocurrency and targeting U.S.-based facilitators who provide forged or stolen identities for North Korean operatives.
Yet, the regime’s scheme runs deep. North Korean nationals have infiltrated many top global companies, and researchers continue to uncover evidence of new tactics and techniques operatives have used to evade detection.
You can read the full indictment below.
