North Carolina man accused of helping fund North Korea nuclear weapons, feds say

Joe Marusak, The Charlotte Observer on Jan 25, 2025

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A North Carolina man arrested in Charlotte is accused of raising money for North Korea’s nuclear and other weapons programs, federal prosecutors in Miami said.

The FBI charged Emanuel Ashtor, who also goes by Ndagijimana Emmanuel, and four other men in a years-long scheme to install North Korean IT workers as remote employees at unsuspecting companies worldwide, Bryan Vorndran, assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, said in a statement Thursday announcing the indictments.

North Korea did so also to evade U.S. and other sanctions, Vorndran said.

North Korea residents Jin Sung-Il and Pak Jin-Song; Pedro Ernesto Alonso De Los Reyes of Mexico; and New York resident Erick Ntekereze Prince also were indicted.

All were charged with conspiracy to cause damage to a protected computer, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to transfer false identification documents.

“The indictments should highlight to all American companies the risk posed by the North Korean government,” Vorndran said..

Shelley Lynch, spokesperson for the Charlotte FBI office, confirmed Saturday that Ashtor was arrested in Charlotte, but didn’t immediately know where he lives in the state. According to a public records search by The Charlotte Observer, Ashtor lives in Raleigh. Ashtor did not respond to an email from The Observer on Saturday and no one answered the door at the home in Raleigh.

According to the indictment, the men and unindicted co-conspirators obtained IT work from at least 64 U.S. companies from April 2018 through August 2024.

Payments from 10 of the companies totaled at least $866,255, most of which the men are accused of laundering through a Chinese bank account, prosecutors said.

The FBI searched Ashtor’s home, where the agency said he previously operated a “laptop farm” that hosted laptops from victim companies. The intent was “to deceive companies into thinking they had hired U.S.-located workers,” according to the indictment.

“The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has dispatched thousands of skilled IT workers to live abroad, primarily in China and Russia,” according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release.

Schemes included “pseudonymous email, social media, payment platform and online job site accounts, fake websites sites and proxy computers,” according to the indictment.

Some of the IT workers earned up to $300,000 annually, “generating hundreds of millions of dollars collectively each year” that went to the weapons programs, the indictment says.

Prosecutors accuse Jin, Pak and other North Korean co-conspirator of using forged and stolen identity documents, including U.S. passports with stolen personally identifiable information. to hide their identities.

Ashto and Ntekereze received laptops at their homes from unsuspecting U.S. employers. They are accused of downloading and installing remote access software on the computers, without authorization, the indictment charges.