😱Arizona Dame Dupes 300+ Firms for North Korea: The $17M IT Ruse That’ll Make You Snort Tea!

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive—and, it seems, to assist North Korean IT workers in their curious quest for global domination via spreadsheet. A resident of the southwestern United States, one Christina Marie Chapman, has found herself on the wrong side of both the law and common decency after engineering a scheme so audacious it would make even Bertie Wooster raise an eyebrow.

Yes, dear reader, the DPRK threat—a matter once confined to Bond villains and feverish political cartoons—has now entered the realm of the absurdly intricate. Its tactics? Positively devious. Its accomplices? Well, let’s just say Arizona wasn’t prepared for this particular brand of mischief.

A Press Release Fit for Jeeves (If He Were Into Crime)

In a plot twist worthy of a Wodehouse novel, Ms. Chapman, aged 50 and hailing from Litchfield Park, confessed her guilt in February over a series of charges that sound more like a soup menu than legal accusations: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering, and identity theft. Quite the smorgasbord of wrongdoing, wouldn’t you agree?

The punishment handed down by U.S. District Court Judge Randolph D. Moss was no mere slap on the wrist. Oh no! Chapman must serve 102 months behind bars—time enough to pen several volumes of memoirs titled *How I Ruined My Life for Fun and Profit*—and endure three years of supervised release. She also forfeited $284,555.92 earmarked for her North Korean collaborators and coughed up an additional $176,850 in penalties. One imagines she won’t be dining out at luxury retail stores anytime soon.

“Christina Chapman perpetrated a years’ long scheme,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew R. Galeotti, with all the gravitas of a man who knows villainy when he sees it. “Millions raised for the DPRK regime, hundreds of companies exploited, dozens of identities stolen.” Honestly, if this weren’t such a serious matter, one might applaud her ambition.

The Laptop Farm: Not as Rustic as It Sounds

Now, about those laptops. Picture this: Chapman running what can only be described as a “laptop farm,” where machines were received and hosted under false pretenses, fooling unwitting organizations into believing their remote employees were based locally. Ah, but these weren’t ordinary employees—they were North Korean IT specialists armed with fake identities and an impressive knack for coding.

These industrious souls maintained a veritable treasure trove of job postings, attempting to infiltrate everything from Fortune 500 corporations to government agencies. Alas, not all endeavors succeeded; breaching certain governmental fortresses proved as challenging as convincing Aunt Agatha to loosen her purse strings.

Among the victims? A top-five television network, a Silicon Valley tech giant, an aerospace manufacturer, an American automaker, a luxury retailer, and a media conglomerate. Truly, no sector was safe from Chapman’s machinations—or should we say, her momentary lapse in moral judgment.

And then there were the devices themselves. Forty-nine laptops shipped overseas, many destined for a city in China near the North Korean border. Ninety-plus others were seized during a search of Chapman’s property last October. One wonders how she managed to keep track of them all without resorting to Post-it notes.

Of course, no caper is complete without a touch of tax evasion. Much of the illicit income was falsely reported to the IRS and Social Security Administration using stolen identities. Payroll checks forged in the names of unwitting Americans landed in Chapman’s personal account before being spirited away to foreign shores. How delightfully convoluted!

“The scheme was elaborate,” observed Special Agent Carissa Messick of the IRS Criminal Investigation Phoenix Field Office. “No amount of obfuscation will prevent us from tracking down criminals.” Sage words indeed, though one suspects Ms. Chapman might have benefited from a bit less obfuscation and a bit more honesty.

And so, our tale concludes—not with a bang, but with the dull thud of justice served. Let this be a lesson to aspiring masterminds everywhere: if your plan involves laptops, fake identities, and rogue nations, perhaps consider a career in writing instead. The pay may be lower, but the consequences are far less severe. 😅

2025-07-28 01:51

A Press Release Fit for Jeeves (If He Were Into Crime)

The Laptop Farm: Not as Rustic as It Sounds

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