The US Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on six individuals and two companies that it says helped North Korea convert $800 million into cryptocurrency in 2024 to launder the money to fund its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said on Thursday that the operation placed IT workers in foreign companies and funneled their profits back 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 for years attacked cryptocurrency protocols and networks to steal and launder funds. Last year, hackers linked to the country stole a record $2 billion in cryptocurrency, according to blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis.
The sanctioned network relied on a combination 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.
The OFAC designation included 21 crypto wallet addresses on 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 American companies through deceptive schemes carried out by its offshore IT operators, who weaponize sensitive data and extort companies for substantial payments,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the statement.
According to the Treasury, the DPRK-backed teams used fraudulent documentation, stolen identities, and fabricated personas to gain employment with legitimate companies, including those in the United States and allied countries.
The North Korean government then reportedly 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 of the workers were able to introduce malware into the company’s networks to extract confidential and proprietary information.
Among those sanctioned is Nguyen Quang Viet, CEO of Vietnam-based Quangvietdnbg International Services Co., who the Treasury says converted approximately $2.5 million in cryptocurrency for North Korean actors between mid-2023 and mid-2025.
