North Korea Money Laundering - 9 Individuals

Rewards for Justice is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information that leads to the disruption of financial mechanisms of persons engaged in certain activities that support North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, DPRK), including money laundering, exportation of luxury goods to North Korea, specified cyber-activity and actions that support weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation. Such activities include work by highly skilled North Korean nationals sent abroad whose income generates funds for the DPRK regime.

The DPRK has dispatched thousands of highly skilled IT workers around the world, earning critical revenue for the DPRK’s WMD programs, in violation of U.S. and UN sanctions. These IT workers take advantage of existing demands for IT skills, such as software and mobile application development, to obtain freelance employment contracts around the world. In many cases, they represent themselves as U.S.-based or non-North Korean teleworkers or disguise themselves with front companies, aliases, and third-country facilitators.

The Department is seeking information on the following individuals for their role in the exportation of IT workers from North Korea and money laundering on behalf of the DPRK regime:

• Huang Jingbin 黄靖斌: Met with U.S.-based conspirators near North Korea. He registered accounts with money transfer services (MTS) and Chinese and foreign banks where he received money generated by the scheme. He and Tong Yuze received more than $200,000 from a conspirator between February 2022 and July 2023.
• Liu Menting 劉孟婷: Registered MTS and foreign bank accounts used to receive and transfer money from the scheme.
• Liu Enchia 刘恩嘉: Registered MTS and foreign bank accounts used to receive and transfer money from the scheme.
• Song Min Kim (a.k.a. Chengmin Jin): Managed an information technology company based in DPRK and assisted in the creation of a U.S. company through which his employees could obtain remote IT work with other U.S. companies.
• Tong Yuze 佟雨泽: Registered MTS and foreign bank accounts which received and transferred proceeds from the scheme. One of the scheme’s shell company websites identified Tong as the China-based representative for the company, which received more than $140,000 from other participants in the conspiracy.
• Xu Yongzhe 徐勇哲: registered MTS and foreign bank accounts that were used to receive and transfer proceeds generated through the scheme.
• Yuan Ziyou (Samuel Yuan): Registered and paid for multiple online accounts and infrastructure used in the money laundering scheme, including web domains for three shell companies.
• Zhou Baoyu 周宝玉: Registered MTS and Chinese bank accounts that received and transferred money from the scheme. He is associated with seven businesses and six bank accounts used for money laundering.
• Zhou Zhenbang 周震邦: Registered MTS and financial accounts used to send and receive funds for the conspiracy, including from Zhou Baoyu.

From 2021 to late 2024, these individuals compromised the identities of more than 80 U.S. persons to obtain remote jobs at over 100 U.S. companies. They participated in a scheme to create credible fake American citizenship documents, register U.S. shell companies and bank accounts, gain technical employment with U.S. companies, receive wages, launder and remit that money to banks and individuals in China, and ultimately facilitate the transmission of the illicit funds to the DPRK regime. The scheme involved assistance from at least four U.S. citizens who hosted employer laptops in the United States through which the DPRK IT workers could, without authorization, remotely access company networks and perform work.