**Nashville, TN** - **Matthew Isaac Knoot** and **Erick Ntekereze Prince** have each been sentenced to 18 months in prison for operating laptop farms that facilitated fraudulent remote employment for North Korean IT workers. These individuals are the seventh and eighth U.S.-based 'laptop farmers' to be imprisoned this year as part of a federal initiative targeting North Korea's illicit revenue generation schemes. ### Enabling Illicit Revenue Generation According to **Assistant Attorney General John A. Eisenberg**, these sentences hold accountable U.S. nationals who enabled North Korea's efforts to infiltrate U.S. networks and profit from U.S. companies. The defendants helped North Korean IT workers masquerade as legitimate employees, compromising U.S. corporate networks and generating revenue for a heavily sanctioned regime. ### Knoot's Operation **Knoot**, who was arrested and charged in August 2024, ran a laptop farm from his Nashville residence between July 2022 and August 2023. He received company-issued laptops addressed to stolen identities, then installed unauthorized remote desktop software. This allowed North Korean IT workers to appear as legitimate U.S.-based employees. Victim companies paid over $250,000 to IT workers associated with Knoot's operation. These payments were falsely reported to the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service under stolen identities. ### Prince's Involvement **Prince**, operating through his company, **Taggcar Inc.**, enabled at least three North Korean IT workers to obtain remote employment at U.S. companies from approximately June 2020 through August 2024. Victim companies paid the IT workers hired with Prince's help more than $943,000 in salary, with the majority routed overseas. ### Financial Impact and Restitution Knoot's actions caused more than $500,000 in auditing and remediation costs at victim companies, while Prince's actions caused over $1 million in remediation costs. In addition to their prison sentences, Knoot was ordered to pay $15,100 in restitution and forfeit an additional $15,100, and Prince was ordered to forfeit $89,000. ### FBI Warnings The **FBI** has been warning about North Korean IT workers infiltrating U.S. firms since at least 2023, noting that North Korea maintains a large army of thousands of IT workers using identity theft to secure employment at hundreds of American companies each year. ### Previous Cases In April, U.S. nationals **Kejia Wang** and **Zhenxing Wang** were also sentenced to prison for aiding North Korean IT workers. Last July, **Christina Marie Chapman** from Arizona received a 102-month prison sentence for running a laptop farm that helped North Korean IT workers get hired by 309 U.S. companies using stolen identities.  ## [99% of What Mythos Found Is Still Unpatched.](https://hubs.li/Q04crVgD0) AI chained four zero-days into one exploit that bypassed both renderer and OS sandboxes. A wave of new exploits is coming. At the Autonomous Validation Summit (May 12 & 14), see how autonomous, context-rich validation finds what's exploitable, proves controls hold, and closes the remediation loop. [Claim Your Spot](https://hubs.li/Q04crVgD0)