US nail salon worker arrested for holding 13 remote IT jobs. He received over Rs 8 crore in salary

The fraud came to light after one of the 13 companies that hired the accused discovered that screenshots of him taken during the online interview and after it, did not match. (Representational image)

A 40-year-old nail salon worker in the US is facing at least two decades in prison after it came to light that he allegedly worked with Chinese nationals to get 13 remote jobs with different American IT companies between 2021 and 2024. Through these jobs, Minh Phuong Ngoc Vong, earned more than $970,000 (about Rs 8 crore) in salary for software development tasks that were actually carried out by suspected North Korean operatives working out of China, Fortune reported.

According to the US' department of justice, some of these IT jobs involved contracting out software services to government agencies like the federal aviation administration. China-based developers used these jobs to get access to highly sensitive government systems that they logged into from overseas, the authorities said. They added that Vong was part of a vast scam operation in which trained North Korean nationals work with facilitators in the US to fraudulently bag remote-work IT jobs under various identities, work from Russia or China, and then illegally transfer their salaries to North Korea's supreme leader, Kim Jong Un.

In Vong's case, US authorities believe that he worked with developers in China, including a “William James" who is suspected to be a North Korean national, Fortune reported. Vong allegedly told an FBI agent that “William” approached him through a cell phone video game app and told him he could “legally” make money by getting development jobs and then giving William access to his computer.

Authorities found that Vong allegedly let James and other operatives make fake resumes for him, which stated that he, a software developer with 16 years of experience, had a degree from the University of Hawaii. The resume also stated that Vong had a secret-level security clearance. In reality, Vong neither has any degree nor any experience in software development.

The fraud came to light after one of the 13 companies discovered that a screenshot of Vong taken during an online interview did not match a second screenshot taken after the final interview, when Vong was asked to show his driver’s license and US passport to confirm his identity.