Last year I met a young CEO who was suspicious that some folks interviewing for coding jobs at his company were scammers. We chatted about the situation, and it was interesting—but I fully expected it to be some common-or-garden fraud, or the kind of “overwork” scam that has gotten popular since the pandemic.

On closer inspection, though, the reality was much stranger than I ever imagined.

It turned out they weren’t ordinary fraudsters, but in fact gangs of cybercriminals working for the North Korean government who steal people’s identities and score high-paying remote IT jobs in the West and then send the money they earn (and data they steal) back to Pyongyang.

Seriously.

Security industry insiders knew about this, but the story hadn’t really reached the general public. And, at the same time, the problem is increasing. These fraudsters rely on tech, and they’re getting upgraded all the time: AI to cheat on coding tests; LLMs to fake the answers to interview questions; deepfake tech to get past ID verification; VPNs to dial in to work from overseas. But they also use old-school techniques, too, with accomplices who run their ground game for them—connecting their computers, filling in forms, sometimes even doing stuff like taking drug tests.

I figured this was a story that was so interesting I’d want to read more about it. Then I realized that I had the chance to actually write the story myself. So I embarked on a full investigation, and dug deeper. I talked to victims, experts, defectors. I even sat in on job interviews with North Koreans who were posing as Americans, using stolen identities and pretending they were in Ohio or Florida rather than China or Russia.

It touches on a topic that I’m fascinated by, which is the history of fakery—from the ancient world to the digital age.

The result was just published in Wired. Thanks to the team there, especially editors Sandra Upson and Rachel Morris—it was fun (and hard) to be out reporting again, and odd to be on the writer’s side of the desk rather than the editor’s. And lots of appreciation to everyone who was part of the story along the way.