Annie Minoff
speaker
239 appearances
11 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Jun 2025
Annie Minoff’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
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.
And do they do the job?
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.
What kind of stuff?
These North Korean scammers have been able to infiltrate a wide range of industries, from retail to the auto industry, even to cybersecurity.
That is wild to me. Imagine being a North Korean hacker and applying for a job at a cybersecurity company.
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.
Scammers have no problem doing interviews, showing up for Zoom meetings, and coding remotely. But there are some tasks that they can't do, tasks that require them to be physically present in the U.S. But the scammers have found a way around this, too.
One key hire is the laptop farmer. How important is the laptop farmer in all of this?
Laptop farmers help make that happen. They receive North Koreans' work laptops and help set them up so that the scammers can operate them remotely. They also help with logging on in the morning and logging off at night. And that's what Christina Chapman did.
After she got that LinkedIn message, Chapman became one of what researchers estimate could be dozens of laptop farmers who've cropped up all across the U.S.
But according to the indictment, that was just the beginning.
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.
Wow.
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.
Chapman opens the packaging to reveal a $72 green ring.
That same day, Chapman posted about going to a comedy show where drunken actors perform Shakespeare.
Such a contrast from the woman who was crying on the TikTok and now can afford to have the queen seat.
But then, in October of 2023, Chapman's life took yet another turn.
In early 2024, Chapman was arrested and charged with fraud, identity theft, and money laundering. She pleaded guilty. She's due to be sentenced next month and could face just over nine years in prison. Did she know she was doing the bidding of the North Koreans?
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