American Nationals Sentenced for Running Illicit ‘Laptop Farm’ Operations for North Korea

Several U.S. companies were duped into hiring North Korean IT workers, falsely believing that these employees were located in the United States.

The U.S. Department of Justice in Washington on April 27, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Wednesday the sentencing of two U.S. nationals in separate cases for their roles in facilitating a fraudulent remote information technology (IT) worker scheme that generated more than $1 million in revenue for North Korea.

Matthew Isaac Knoot from Nashville and Erick Ntekereze Prince from New York “received and hosted laptop computers at their residences that victim U.S. companies shipped to IT workers they had hired and who the victim companies believed were located at the defendants’ residences,” the DOJ said in a May 6 statement. However, these remote information technology (IT) workers were affiliated with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).