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How an East Tennessee 'laptop farm' may have helped North Korea's weapons program

The FBI previously raided a Jefferson City home and a Carson-Newman dorm and found the "laptop farm."

JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. — At least one person from East Tennessee is believed to have been involved in a covert scheme to allow IT workers outside the country to infiltrate U.S. companies by setting up laptop farms, which reportedly benefitted North Korea's nuclear weapons program in some cases, according to an unsealed federal investigation. 

"Hacking is done by, just, regular computers," said Paul Sponcia, CEO of a technology company. "Really, the folks that are doing this are probably pretty smart."

The unsealed investigation said a man from Ukraine worked with people in the U.S. to set up the laptop farms. Cybersecurity experts said laptop farms are not hard to set up, and can be used for a variety of digital crimes.

"If you went to KUB and bought, you know, a gig of internet really cheap, and then someone gave you 15 laptops to set up on your wireless network, that wouldn't be that difficult," he said. "It could be five, it could be 500. It could be 50."

Some of the laptop farms were set up in a Jefferson City home and a Carson-Newman dorm. The investigation said they were located in East Tennessee, San Diego and Virginia Beach and were used to advertise remote U.S. jobs through a website called "UpWorkSell."

The investigation said IT workers from North Korea were able to pose as U.S. citizens with stolen identities by using the laptop farms. The North Korean workers would be able to work for U.S. companies through the laptop farms.

"Trying to use social security numbers, credit cards, things like that for financial gain for an organization," said Sponcia. "Nation-states like North Korea, or China, or Russia will hire these companies that these gangs — it's organized crime units — will do the work on the behalf of the nation-state."

The workers involved in the investigation were involved in the country's missile program. According to the IRS, more than 300 U.S. companies were impacted, costing them millions of dollars.

At least five people are facing charges — one is a U.S. citizen and the other four are foreign nationalists. If convicted, they face between 20 years and 97 years in prison.

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