The US Justice Department has charged three North Korean computer programmers for stealing from global financial institutions and firms over USD 1.3 billion.
Federal authorities said the programmers were indicted for conducting a series of hacks to steal and extort from financial institutions around the world in a money-laundering scheme. Furthermore, the three programmers have also been accused of creating and using ‘malicious cryptocurrency applications’, according to a press release from the Justice Department.
Jin Hyok was one of the defendants named in the charges. The other two are John Chang Hyok and Kim Il. Federal officials also announced that a Canadian American citizen has pleaded guilty to charges in the money laundering scheme after admitting to helping the indicted programmers, ‘including ATM ‘cash-out’ operations and a cyber-enabled bank heist orchestrated by North Korean hackers’.
The US attorney’s office in Los Angeles and the FBI also obtained warrants to seize roughly USD 1.9 million in cryptocurrency that was allegedly stolen from a New York bank so that it could be returned to the bank.
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