“Virtually every hiring manager approached by CoinDesk for this story acknowledged that they had interviewed suspected North Korean developers, hired them unwittingly, or knew someone who had.”
More than a dozen crypto firms, including Cosmos Hub, Injective, Fantom, Sushi and Yearn Finance, hired North Korean IT workers on fake IDs. One Cosmos developer puts North Korea’s share of incoming crypto applicants above 50%. Sushi lost $3 million in a 2021 hack that CoinDesk ties to suspected North Korean workers on its own payroll. An industry built on not checking who you deal with hired exactly who you’d expect.