People enter the State Department Building in Washington, U.S., Jan. 26, 2017. Reuters-Yonhap

The United States offered Thursday to provide a reward of up to $5 million for information on three North Korean IT workers and their manager who were engaged in a scheme enabling the workers to get illicit telework employment with false identities belonging to U.S. citizens.

The State Department announced the reward for the workers using the aliases Han Jiho, Jun Chunji and Xu Haoran and their manager Zhonghua who were involved in the scheme that it said generated at least $6.8 million for the North Korean regime.

From October 2020 through October 2023, Christina Chapman, a U.S. national, helped the workers obtain work as remote software and applications developers with companies in a range of sectors and industries, it said. They used false identifies belonging to more than 60 real U.S. people.

The workers also made a failed attempt to gain similar employment at two U.S. government agencies, according to the department.

Chapman is alleged to have assisted the workers in acquiring valid identities of U.S. citizens, and received and hosted laptop computers issued to them to make it appear that the workers were based in the U.S.

She is also purported to have assisted them in connecting remotely to the U.S. companies' IT networks on a daily basis and helped launder the proceeds from the scheme by receiving, processing and distributing paychecks from the firms to the workers and others.

The North Korean workers in question are linked to the North's Munitions Industry Department that oversees the development of the regime's ballistic missiles, weapons production, and research and development programs, the department said.

The reward is from the department's Rewards for Justice (RFJ) program administered by its Diplomatic Security Service.

Since its inception in 1984, the RFJ program has paid more than $250 million to more than 125 people across the globe who gave information to help prevent terrorism and resolve threats to U.S. national security. Of the total, RFJ has paid rewards of $5 million each to two individuals whose information helped disrupt an illicit financial scheme that benefited North Korea. (Yonhap)

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