Christina Chapman became a front, that is, a “facilitator,” for a North Korean Operation in the United States. She found jobs for thousands of workers. The companies hiring thought they were hiring American citizens, instead they were hiring North Koreans. The money these workers earned was used for such things as the North Korean nuclear program.
Thousands of identities were stolen to make this fraudulent and illegal practice work. Chapman knew she was committing crimes but the money was very good.
(Quoted from the article linked to above.) To run the schemes, the North Koreans need facilitators in the United States, because the companies “aren’t going to willingly send laptops to North Korea or even China”, said Adam Meyers, head of counter-adversary operations for CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm. “They find somebody that is also looking for a gig-economy job, and they say, ‘Hey, we are happy to get you $200 per laptop that you manage,’” said Meyers, whose team has published reports on the North Korean operation. Chapman grew up in an abusive home and drifted “between low-paying jobs and unstable housing”, according to documents submitted by her attorneys. In 2020, she was also taking care of her mother, who had been diagnosed with renal cancer.About six months after the LinkedIn message, Chapman started running what law enforcement officials describe as “laptop farms”. (End Quote.)
She ran the scheme for about three years and it generated roughly seventeen million dollars for the North Koreans. She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments. She was sentenced to more than eight years in prison and to pay fines.
Of course, the money the North Koreans made was one thing but the value of the information they got as employees of major American companies will never be known.
This was a betrayal, and COVID and hard times are not much of an excuse for committing massive fraud on behalf of a foreign nation.
What’s the business ethics analysis here? This is a set of crimes and the perpetrator was well aware that she was committing federal crimes. Breaking the law particularly in cooperation with a foreign power is an obvious ethics failure. No deeper reasoning is merited here. This was wrong and there is no defense merely a relative handful of mitigating circumstances.
J. Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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