Christina Chapman presented herself as just another influencer on TikTok. In reality, she operated a “laptop farm” that allowed North Koreans to take jobs as U.S. tech workers and scam more than 300 U.S. companies out of millions of dollars. WSJ’s Robert McMillan breaks down the scam and Chapman’s crucial role in it. Annie Minoff hosts. Further Listening: - North Korea's Propaganda Mastermind - Your New Hire May Be a North Korean Spy - Hack Me If You Can Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Christina Chapman and what is her TikTok content about?
Bob, can you tell me about this influencer you've been watching on TikTok?
Yeah, her name is Christina Chapman.
Hi, lovelies. I just wanted to pop on for a second.
And she talks about food accountability.
I guess it's day three. Day three. Day two of accountable eating.
She talks about political causes.
that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States.
She talks about Japanese boy bands. And I'm wearing my shirt.
Epidemia. This is not official merch. These are shirts that I made myself.
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Chapter 2: What is laptop farming and how does it work?
So it doesn't really taste pina colada anymore. But it's good.
What was Christina Chapman doing with 10 laptops in her spare room? Well, according to a federal indictment... What she's doing is a scam.
And what the scam is called is laptop farming.
The U.S. government says that Christina Chapman was a laptop farmer, and her employer was North Korea.
She's facilitating a multi-million dollar fraud that's designed to bring money into the heavily sanctioned North Korean regime.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minoff. It's Tuesday, June 3rd. Coming up on the show, how an everyday American helped North Korea scam corporate America.
Hi, everybody, TikTok fam. I need some help, and I don't know really how to do this.
In January 2021, Christina Chapman took to TikTok to check in with her followers. Her financial situation was precarious.
I mean, she had worked as a waitress, as a massage therapist, and right around 2019, she decided to sort of reinvent herself in the era of the gig economy. She went to a tech boot camp and got some web development skills, but it wasn't paying out, right? Like, she was living in a small town north of Minneapolis, basically in a trailer.
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Chapter 3: What role did Christina Chapman play in the North Korean scam?
We do know that Chapman agreed to help out. And according to court documents, we know who that message came from. North Korean scammers. Chapman had stumbled into what's become a vast scam designed to bring hundreds of millions of dollars into North Korea. It took off during the pandemic, when many U.S. tech jobs moved online. And it works like this.
North Koreans trained in IT apply for remote jobs in the U.S. Those workers get hired, start work, and get paid, all under false identities.
It's almost always a tech job, right? So it's quite often coding.
And do they do the job?
Yeah, they do, you know. Like, I've heard stories of these, some North Koreans, they just kind of, they get hired, they log into a couple of meetings, they never say anything, and then they're quickly fired, right? And then some apparently last for years.
According to the FBI, their paychecks likely get funneled to the North Korean regime, where the money may help fund things like the country's nuclear weapons program.
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Chapter 4: How do North Korean scammers infiltrate U.S. companies?
This is sort of their latest hustle, and it's a pretty lucrative one. The FBI estimates they make hundreds of millions of dollars a year from this. But the other problem is that they also steal data, and they extort their employers.
What kind of stuff?
Well, I mean, whatever they can get their hands on.
These North Korean scammers have been able to infiltrate a wide range of industries, from retail to the auto industry, even to cybersecurity.
There's one cybersecurity company, I don't know who it is, but they apparently hired nine workers that turned out to be North Koreans.
That is wild to me. Imagine being a North Korean hacker and applying for a job at a cybersecurity company.
Yeah, imagine getting it. Richard, what are you looking for in terms of challenges with this job?
I'm looking for any challenges and opportunities for my professional goals.
The U.S. cybersecurity company CrowdStrike shared a video with the journal. It shows just how adept North Korean scammers have become at acing job interviews.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of the North Korean scam on U.S. cybersecurity?
Christina Chapman did a lot of things for her clients that were crucial to the whole fraud. And she kind of operated like a staffing agency for illegal workers.
How laptop farming transformed Chapman's life? That's after the break. By January 2023, Christina Chapman was much more than a veteran laptop farmer. She was like an HR representative, administrative assistant, and tech support all rolled into one person.
She's basically responding to all the requests that are coming into all these North Korean workers to just making sure they get through the HR onboarding. When you get hired, you got to fill out, you know, W-2s. So much paperwork. You got to provide a proof that you can work in the United States.
You have to install some sort of remote access tool on the laptop so that the North Koreans can connect to it and pretend to be working from that laptop. And, you know, sometimes she seemed a bit worn out from all the... She talks about the demands of her clients, how demanding they were.
And I did not make my own breakfast this morning. My clients are going crazy, so... How much money was she making in this job?
Well, she made... OK, money, you know, not like crazy amounts of money. I mean, according to the Fed, she brought in in the paychecks that were paid to the fake workers that work through her laptop farm amounted to more than 17 million dollars.
Wow.
And she made a percent of that in fees.
Chapman's total earnings amounted to just under $177,000 over two years. With that money, she was able to move into a four-bedroom house in Phoenix with a roommate. It even had a yard for her three chihuahuas, Henry, Serenity, and Burrito. And she could afford to treat herself once in a while.
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Chapter 6: What challenges do North Korean scammers face in remote jobs?
Well, there's no evidence to show that she knew she was working with the North Koreans, but there's excerpts of her chats that are included in charging documents. It's pretty clear she knew she was doing something illegal. She talks about the illegality of, you know, signing federal forms and forging signatures and things like that.
Without her laptop farming job, Chapman found herself back in a familiar situation, trying to string together enough gig work to make ends meet.
At one point, she does DoorDash in Phoenix and makes like $7.25 for the night. She tries to sell coloring books. She tries GoFundMes. She just tries anything she can to kind of keep herself housed.
According to her attorney, Chapman is currently living at a homeless shelter. She's right back where she started.
Even worse, yeah.
Now that this has become such a pervasive problem, how are government agencies and companies fighting back against this North Korean remote worker scam?
You know, it's funny. I interviewed the CSO of Amazon a couple of weeks ago, and he was aware of this problem. And I said, what do you do about it? And he said, bring your employees in five days a week.
For any boss who's been looking for an excuse to bring people back to the office, this is it.
I mean, you got to meet them face to face. Like, you got to bring them in. This is a huge problem. Like, there's no driver's license for the Internet, right? And it is basically impossible to really know that you are... meeting somebody who is who they claim to be, right?
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