The US Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on six individuals and two companies it says helped North Korea convert $800 million into crypto in 2024 to launder money and finance its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said Thursday that the operation placed IT workers with foreign companies and redirected their income to Pyongyang. The network operated in several countries, including Vietnam, Laos and Spain, according to the Treasury.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has been targeting cryptocurrency protocols and networks for years to steal and launder funds. Last year, hackers linked to the country stole a record $2 billion worth of crypto, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.
The sanctioned network relies on a mix of crypto infrastructure, including centralized exchanges, hosted wallets, decentralized finance (DeFi) services, and cross-chain bridges, to facilitate the movement of funds, Chainalysis said in a post on its website.
OFAC’s designation included 21 crypto wallet addresses across multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, Tron, and Bitcoin, reflecting what Chainalysis researchers described as the DPRK’s increasingly multi-chain approach to moving and hiding illicit funds.
“The North Korean regime targets U.S. companies through deceptive schemes carried out by its overseas cyber operatives, who use sensitive data and extort companies for substantial payments,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the statement.
According to the Treasury, DPRK-backed teams used fraudulent documents, stolen identities, and fabricated personas to obtain jobs with legitimate companies, including in the United States and allied countries.
The North Korean government then allegedly appropriated most of the salaries earned by these overseas IT workers, generating hundreds of millions of dollars for its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs. Some employees were able to introduce malware into company networks to extract confidential and sensitive information.
Among those sanctioned is Nguyen Quang Viet, CEO of Vietnam-based Quangvietdnbg International Services Co., who the Treasury says converted about $2.5 million into cryptocurrency for North Korean actors between mid-2023 and mid-2025.
