A nail salon worker from Bowie, Maryland, has pled guilty to a conspiracy charge after being involved in a massive remote IT job fraud scheme.
Minh Phuong Ngoc Vong, 40, used his U.S. identity to secure over a dozen tech jobs between 2021 and 2024, earning nearly $1 million in salary.
However, Vong wasn’t doing the work himself—he was working with developers in China, including operatives allegedly linked to North Korea.
The scheme was much more than just a fraud operation. Authorities claim that the developers were using these fake identities to access highly sensitive government systems in the U.S., including the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Department of Defense, and the Secret Service.
In fact, Vong’s employers didn’t know that the work was actually being completed by a team of hackers working out of Shenyang, China, and other international locations.
The U.S. Department of Justice revealed that this fraud is part of a larger operation that has been running for years.
The fraudsters would obtain remote tech jobs under fake identities, perform the work from China or Russia, and then send the salaries back to North Korea’s regime to fund its illegal nuclear and missile programs.
The United Nations estimates this scheme generates hundreds of millions of dollars annually—money that helps fuel North Korea’s dangerous ambitions.
The job that Vong held with a Virginia-based company even involved work on a contract for the FAA, where the developers had access to critical aviation data.
Vong was paid over $28,000 for work done by foreign nationals while posing as a legitimate U.S. tech employee.
Vong, who has no actual software development experience, was recruited by one of the North Korean operatives, who convinced him to rent out his identity in exchange for money.
His guilty plea on wire fraud charges could send him to prison for up to 20 years.
This case highlights the growing threat of cyber fraud and foreign espionage in the U.S. job market.
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The FBI, Department of Justice, and other federal agencies are continuing to investigate the broader network of fraudsters and hackers involved in these kinds of operations.