The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on six individuals and two companies it says helped North Korea convert $800 million in 2024 into crypto to launder the money and fund its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.
Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said Thursday that the operation placed IT workers in foreign companies and funneled their earnings back to Pyongyang. The network operated across several countries, including Vietnam, Laos and Spain, according to the Treasury Department.
For years, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has targeted cryptocurrency protocols and networks to steal and launder funds. Last year, hackers linked to the country stole a record $2 billion in crypto, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.
The sanctioned network relied on a mix of crypto infrastructure, including centralized exchanges, hosted wallets, decentralized financial services (DeFi) and cross-chain bridges to facilitate the movement of funds, Chainalysis said in a post on its website.
OFAC’s designation included 21 crypto wallet addresses across several blockchains, including Ethereum, Tron and Bitcoin, reflecting what the Chainalysis researchers described as the DPRK’s increasingly multichain approach to moving and hiding illicit funds.
“The North Korean regime targets American businesses through deceptive schemes conducted by its overseas IT operators that weaponize sensitive data and extort companies for significant payments,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the statement.
According to the Treasury Department, DPRK-backed teams used fraudulent documentation, stolen identities and fictitious personas to obtain work at legitimate companies, including those in the United States and allied countries.
The North Korean government then reportedly appropriated most of the wages earned by these overseas IT workers, generating hundreds of millions of dollars for its WMD and ballistic missile programs. Some of the workers were able to introduce malware into the company’s network to extract proprietary and sensitive information.
Among those sanctioned is Nguyen Quang Viet, CEO of Vietnam-based Quangvietdnbg International Services Co., which the finance ministry said converted about $2.5 million into cryptocurrency for North Korean actors between mid-2023 and mid-2025.
