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FBI says North Korea deployed thousands of IT workers to get remote jobs in US with fake IDs
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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Does no-one check the damn IDs, ffs? It's a simple matter of typing some numbers into a computer.
I don't know about the U.S. but in the UK where I'm from, "illegally hiring a non-UK citizen" would be a criminal offence for the hiring company. How are they going to tax them?
A good chunk of the American economy is dependent on companies not checking the legal status of employees.
I get cash jobs like manual labor / agriculture, but where are these companies depositing these paychecks?
Contracting firms which subcontract out.
Another good way to fuck over the legitimate workers
From the summary posted below, it seems the US companies are outsourcing to China and Russia, and North Koreans living in those countries are getting these jobs. I'm guessing a part of whatever they send home is being taken, probably without their consent, by the NK government for weapon manufacturing.
It would be hard for a US company to verify if a document presented as a Chinese or Russian ID is actually from those countries or a forgery. You could ask for a passport, but they could always say they don't have one.
Holy smokes!! Part of their taxes are invested in their military industrial complex???
MADNESS!!
Are they just talking about taxes? I was thinking the NK government might be asking the workers for some 'voluntary' donations. If it is just the government taxing them and part of the tax revenue going towards the military then it doesn't seem like anything illegal is happening. Well, apart from the faking IDs part, but a bunch of poor people faking IDs to get jobs is a much much smaller issue than the NK government faking IDs to fund nukes.
Every time I see a comment about North Korea, I recommend watching "The Haircut" by BoyBoy. You can find it on YouTube. It's just 20 minutes long and it's quite entertaining to watch.
There's a nice part on the video about the "Prison Camps" and "Death Squads" which are applicable to "voluntary donations" as well. It also applies to the "poor people of NK" as well.
Wouldn't the ID need to be associated with a verifiable green card? (Again, not an expert in US employment)
Only if they worked physically in the US. these people work offshore for US companies.
Who pays them?
I'm guessing here but based on how I've done international contracts... The US-based company pays the not us-based company, and that not US-based company pays the employees. The not US-based company is responsible for ensuring that the employee can legally work in the country that they are physically in. And since that country is not America, they don't need an American green card.
All perfectly legal (unless sanctions forbid it).
But in that case they wouldn't need any fake IDs.