The US slapped sanctions Monday on two Chinese men it said laundered money for North Korea’s notorious Lazarus Group, a hacking and cybercrime operation.
The US Treasury alleged that Wu Huihui and Cheng Hung-man worked from China and Hong Kong to launder virtual currencies stolen by Lazarus operatives through the international financial system, including through the US banking sector, for use by the North Korean government.
The Lazarus Group has been operating for more than a decade.
It gained notoriety in 2014 when it allegedly hacked Sony Pictures Entertainment, releasing sensitive internal documents as revenge for The Interview, a satirical film that mocked North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Since then, it has allegedly engineered or taken part in numerous online thefts, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
According to the US Treasury, the Lazarus Group is controlled by Pyongyang’s primary intelligence agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau.
Lazarus targets a wide range of government and private bodies for espionage, data theft and monetary theft, it said.
Citing publicly reported data, the Treasury said North Korean cyber actors looted an estimated US$1.7 billion worth of virtual currency in 2022 alone.
That included stealing US$620 million from the online game Axie Infinity.
The Treasury also added to its sanctions blacklist two officials of the already sanctioned Korea Kwangson Banking Corp, for allegedly helping move and hide funds used to support North Korea’s ballistic missile programmes.
.scmp.com