The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Tuesday charged 14 people and seized about 187 computers as part of its ongoing efforts to disrupt North Korea's fraudulent remote IT worker (ITW) scheme.

The indictment charges a mix of U.S. citizens and Chinese nationals for their roles in an IT worker conspiracy affecting more than 70 U.S. companies, charging them with wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit identity theft, and aggravated identity theft.

The two U.S. nationals, Carrillo and Bostelle, have been arrested, while the rest remain at large. The fraudulent scheme was operational from around 2019 to July 2025. Another key U.S.-based co-conspirator, Trey Michael Nolte, has been named in the indictment but was not charged.

Nolte is alleged to have managed a shell company called Dark Falls LLC that claimed to offer software development services, but was in fact used to perpetrate the criminal scheme. The operation also included the dismantling of more than 40 so-called laptop farms across Texas during raids that were conducted between September 21 and 25, 2026.

"Threats posed by nation-states like North Korea are a stark reminder that our adversaries will go to great measures to exploit our nation's economic strength to further and fuel their own nefarious agendas," said U.S. Attorney David M. Toepfer for the Northern District of Ohio.

Court documents allege that the defendants colluded to participate in a multi-year fraudulent scheme to land remote IT work to generate illicit revenue for the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), in violation of international sanctions and to fund its nuclear weapons and other military programs.

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