Five people plead guilty to helping North Koreans infiltrate US companies as 'remote IT workers'

Five people have pleaded guilty to helping North Koreans defraud U.S. companies by posing as remote IT workers, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Friday .

The five people are accused of working as “facilitators” who helped North Koreans get jobs by providing their own real identities, or false and stolen identities of more than a dozen U.S. nationals. The facilitators also hosted company-provided laptops in their homes across the U.S. to make it look like the North Korean workers lived locally, according to the DOJ press release.

These actions affected 136 U.S. companies and netted Kim Jong Un’s regime $2.2 million in revenue, said the DOJ.

The latest round of guilty pleas is part of a years-long effort by American authorities to disrupt North Korea’s ability to make money f