Fisker EVs Hired an IT Spy Who Funneled Millions to N. Korea's Missile Program

https://www.torquenews.com/1084/fisker-evs-hired-it-spy-who-funneled-millions-north-koreas-missile-program-case-fbi

by rmason • 2 years ago

134 113 2 years ago

torquenews.com

perihelions2• 2 years ago

This appears to be the indictment:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/media/1352191/dl (pdf)

Some related coverage:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/arizona-woman-accus... ("Arizona woman accused of helping North Koreans get remote IT jobs at 300 companies")

blackeyeblitzar• 2 years ago

“The charges in this case should be a wakeup call for American companies and government agencies that employ remote IT workers,” Nicole Argentieri, head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, said.

I really hope this doesn’t become ammunition for companies who force unjust and unnecessary return to office policies.

kspacewalk2• 2 years ago

Unnecessary - perhaps. Ill-advised, since a lot of talent greatly prefers remote work - perhaps. But unjust? Aren't you taking it a bit far? You don't have the right to remote work.

acdha• 2 years ago

I don’t like it either but it is a real concern. We can’t ignore it but we can try to frame the conversation correctly: we should be able to say this isn’t happening because we have good security policies and monitoring, etc.

ceejayoz3• 2 years ago

Reminds me of https://blog.knowbe4.com/how-a-north-korean-fake-it-worker-t... - I seem to remember it coming up here at the time.

jonhohle2• 2 years ago

I’m sure all the money the US government put into Fisker was already gone by then. A decade later and even more reminders of what a terrible “investment” that was.

karpatic• 2 years ago

Fisker continues to widen my eyes. Unfortunately.

azinman22• 2 years ago

What was all the money?

It's so far worked out for Tesla, and at least of the major auto companies in the US they're still alive when they could have gone under previously.

Supporting new private industry is good policy, if done with balance. China has been employing this very successfully industry after industry.

starik363• 2 years ago

US govt. invested in Tesla? That's news to me.

starik363• 2 years ago

A relative worked at Fisker recently. The loan you are talking about was in 2009. That version of Fisker went out of business in 2014.

The most "recent iteration" of Fisker was basically a company from scratch. It was only called Fisker because it's original founder (Henrik Fisker) retained the rights to the name and logo.

This time around there weren't any loans from the US govt.

kiba• 2 years ago

Which also failed which proved that the founder is a bad bet and that if the US government chooses to invest again, it should steer clear of that dude.

bearjaws• 2 years ago

Imagine losing your job and then hearing that a NK spy stole millions, resulting in your job loss.

Hiring in IT is a joke, there is an obsession with gamifying everything resulting in only people willing to play the game actually getting hired.

xanthor• 2 years ago

It doesn't say millions were stolen. The indictment says North Koreans were paid millions for their work.

I wonder what the quality of work was like

Maarten88• 2 years ago

With all the anger over illegal immigrants taking US jobs, as a European it surprises me that nobody in the US seems to even mention the idea of punishing the employer for employing illegal workers.

If I want to hire someone (local or remote) as an employer here, I better make sure the worker has a valid working permit. Fines for non-compliance towards the employer are huge, even for a single day of work. All paperwork has to be complete before any work is done. Even when hiring through intermediary companies who guarantee it's all legal, liability and fines remain in place for the ultimate employer if it turns out to be not so.

alephnerd3• 2 years ago

punishing the employer for employing an illegal worker

It's already the law.

This is why employers mandate I-9 forms as part of employment.

This is part of the larger indictment against Christine Chapman by the DoJ, who found she was falsifying employment verification documents and giving access to North Koreans in return for a portion of the embezzled sums.

Stories like this are also why there has been a major push for RTO.

ceejayoz3• 2 years ago

Stories like this are also why there has been a major push for RTO.

Citation needed. I find this very unlikely as the root cause.

JumpCrisscross9• 2 years ago

already the law

There is practically zero enforcement. Criminalise hiring illegal workers while stepping up enforcement and you dramatically reduce the value of illegal migration while shutting down large sections of the economy, thereby prompting supply-side inflation.

We don’t do it because this is a politically convenient middle ground that keeps illegal labor in the system while segregating it from competing with most of us. (Put another way: we have a regulated and an unregulated labor market. We like the fruits from the latter.)

BadHumans2• 2 years ago

The anger over illegal immigrants taking US jobs is mostly fearmongering from the people employing illegal immigrants.

mkatx2• 2 years ago

Wait, the ones who are getting a great deal on labor costs are the ones complaining about the source of that great deal?

I'm not so sure..

Spooky233• 2 years ago

Most of the illegal immigrant hoopla has been performative bullshit to make to easier to control employees. If you’re in the chicken processing business or need casual labor, it’s a hell of alot cheaper to avoid paying for social security, worker’s compensation, etc by hiring people whom you can easily exploit by dangling the sword of ICE over their heads.

The US governance model segments immigration and work regulation - the former is a federal matter, the latter is almost exclusively regulated by the states (including enforced of federal rules).

In recent years as conservatives have veered into a more overtly racist and reactionary movement that’s shifted a bit.

DFHippie• 2 years ago

Legislation is frequently proposed to do just this: require all employers to use E-Verify to ensure they don't hire illegal workers. The same people who are constantly firing up voters about immigration are opposed to this. The political issue is valuable to them, as is cheap, cowed, disposable labor. And they know if they succeeded in shipping their workers back over the border there would be economic and political mayhem.

I expect endless demagoguery about immigration and performative cruelty, but nothing that will challenge the bottom line.

Here's a recent bit of commentary on E-Verify: https://jabberwocking.com/the-long-sad-story-of-e-verify/

gwbas1c4• 2 years ago

The people who complain about illegal immigrant labor in the US also like their cheap chicken and other fruits from illegal immigrant labor.

It's a weird case where one business undercuts another by hiring cheap labor, and then the other business has to do the same thing or else risk going out of business.

Better enforcement might help, but remember, people like cheap chicken; it doesn't matter which way you vote.

neuroelectron• 2 years ago

I don't like cheap chicken

silisili• 2 years ago

There are legal means of hiring seasonal workers.

If it needs fixing in law, let's do that... not this weird system we have now of turning our head the other way and waving it off as necessary while ignoring any criticism of said crazy system.

frmersdog4• 2 years ago

People say this, but I always wonder if some rejiggering of the revenue allocation calculus might make it possible to keep chicken cheap while paying the workers a living wage. All you'd have to do is make a handful of executives very disappointed when they open the letter containing their tax bill - or when a federal law enforcement agent knocks on their door.

jandrewrogers4• 2 years ago

In the US, there is no reliable way to verify employment eligibility. What systems do exist tend to produce many false positives and false negatives. Furthermore, you are required to accept documents the demonstrate employment eligibility at face value, even if they are likely to be fraudulent.

In industries that famously have many illegal employees, the companies have cover because the employees always have fraudulent documents. And since the company is required to accept those documents and not discriminate, the company can't be held liable for hiring them even though they are illegal.

Underlying this situation is that it is unconstitutional for the Federal government to issue mandatory ids to citizens that could be used to reliably determine employment eligibility.

JumpCrisscross9• 2 years ago

you are required to accept documents the demonstrate employment eligibility at face value, even if they are likely to be fraudulent

Genuine question: source?

mandatory ids to citizens that could be used to reliably determine employment eligibility

Yes, state-issued IDs, the infallible line keeping underage drinkers out of bars.

Spooky233• 2 years ago

More like they can comply with their minimal legal obligation while accepting documentation that is readily identifiable as fraudulent.

People not motivated to seek shall not find.

MetaWhirledPeas4• 2 years ago

In the US, there is no reliable way to verify employment eligibility.

Enact a law to punish the employers and that would change overnight.

pumanoir• 2 years ago

The scammers in question use stolen US citizens' identities. Same thing happens in Europe to a lesser degree.

MetaWhirledPeas4• 2 years ago

it surprises me that nobody in the US seems to even mention the idea of punishing the employer for employing illegal workers

This has been my proposed solution to the immigration problem in the US. Stop attempting to corral the people coming over, and shift 100% of your resources toward punishing those who employ them. How many people will attempt to sneak into the US when no one is willing to hire them?

I also view this as a "put your money where your mouth is" stance. It changes it from a political issue into one with a practical solution, and the people benefiting from cheap labor would have to be very creative to find fault with it.

anon115• 2 years ago

too much work im gonna hire the immigrant sorry not sorry~

danans• 2 years ago

it surprises me that nobody in the US seems to even mention the idea of punishing the employer for employing illegal workers.

The anti-immigrant politicians can't punish the employers because they would be punishing their own donors.

If that sounds like a contradiction, consider that undocumented/illegal immigrants are effectively pawns who have no political power in the system, and the contradiction disappears entirely.

hollerith2• 2 years ago

How does that make the contradiction disappear? It doesn't.

The resolution to the contradiction is that few candidates to Federal office are opposed to illegal immigration, and those that have opposed illegal immigration have mostly gotten away with merely saying they are opposed while not doing very much to stop illegal immigration.

ijustwanttovote• 2 years ago

If there is an argument for RTO, it would be this.

Stu Sjouwerman: We were hiring a fairly specific, hard-to-find software engineer who had background in AI. We have a number of AI initiatives, and so we needed a software engineer to support all those initiatives.

Jessica Mendoza: The job was posted on online job forums, and pretty soon, resumes started to flow in from all over the country, and one candidate stood out. He said his name was Kyle.

Stu Sjouwerman: "Mr. Kyle" quote, unquote, air quotes, had experience with exactly everything that we needed. It was a very good interview. He was very open. He talked about his strengths and weaknesses, indicated where he felt he needed additional training and indicated a career path. And so, was the perfect interviewee, which made us move to the next step.

Jessica Mendoza: After conducting background checks, Stu's company decided to hire Kyle as a remote employee. They sent him a work laptop to an address in Washington State and started the onboarding process. But almost immediately, it became clear that Kyle was not who he said he was.

Stu Sjouwerman: At that point in time, our team started seeing very concerning traffic on that laptop.

Jessica Mendoza: What kind of concerning traffic?

Stu Sjouwerman: Well, Kyle immediately started downloading malware. We immediately saw that a whole bunch of things were happening that should not be. We tried to get in touch with him and asked if he needed any help. I think this was through Slack, and he said, "Yes, I am trying to debug my router and I'm following instructions from a list." And this is where it became very, very iffy, very fast.

Jessica Mendoza: The company shut down Kyle's laptop and quickly fired him. And then, they investigated. What exactly was Kyle doing? The answer took them completely by surprise.

Stu Sjouwerman: Yes, we have egg on our face because we hired a fake North Korean IT worker, but this is what happened. And if it can happen to us, it can happen to almost anybody.

Jessica Mendoza: It's kind of unbelievable that you hired a North Korean spy as one of your IT guys.

Stu Sjouwerman: Yes. That is pretty scary. And there are hundreds if not thousands that are actually, as we speak right now, in this same situation and delivering work for United States companies.

https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/your-new-hire-may-b...

jimbob45• 2 years ago

Did they not meet him face-to-face? It’s a small price to pay for confirmation that you’re talking to a real person. Even if not, you at least have someone’s face and information to report to the authorities.

1oooqooq• 2 years ago

lol. exactly the same as happened with off shoring in the late 90s. do people not learn?

first they hire telemarketing grunts. then HR gets complacent and normalize not doing any work. then they start using the same techniques for IT workers since for HR they're just more expensive telemarketing.

simple10• 2 years ago

Articles say the guy was an AI developer. But how did he actually steal money from Fisker?

He installed malware on his work computer. Was this then used by North Korea to hack Fisker's internal systems and syphon of money somehow? Maybe I missed the details in one of the articles linked below.

perihelions2• 2 years ago

- "But how did he actually steal money from Fisker?"

AFAICT, he merely worked for them. The only cash flows mentioned in the indictment [0] are simple wages.

The title is a bit misleading. "Millions" is the total haul of the North Korean remote workers over some 60-ish (??) companies. Fisker by itself paid no more than $214,596.00 (page 27, as "Company 6"). The article focuses on Fisker because it's an automotive news site.

[0] https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/media/1352191/dl (pdf)

oleg_antonyan• 2 years ago

A simple IT guy has access to company's finances in such way to move millions. Am I the only one who smells either ridiculous incompetence or plain fraud by the company trying to cover up "something"?

axus• 2 years ago

That was my first reaction, but everything really is computerized these days. I felt the same way about Snowden's access.

Fisker EVs Hired an IT Spy Who Funneled Millions to N. Korea's Missile Program

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