[HN Gopher] Fisker EVs Hired an IT Spy Who Funneled Millions to ...
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Fisker EVs Hired an IT Spy Who Funneled Millions to N. Korea's
Missile Program
Author : rmason
Score : 122 points
Date : 2024-11-05 20:16 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.torquenews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.torquenews.com)
| perihelions wrote:
| This appears to be the indictment:
|
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/media/1352191/dl (pdf)
|
| Some related coverage:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/arizona-woman-accus... (
| _" Arizona woman accused of helping North Koreans get remote IT
| jobs at 300 companies"_)
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| > "The charges in this case should be a wakeup call for
| American companies and government agencies that employ remote
| IT workers," Nicole Argentieri, head of the Justice
| Department's Criminal Division, said.
|
| I really hope this doesn't become ammunition for companies who
| force unjust and unnecessary return to office policies.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Unnecessary - perhaps. Ill-advised, since a lot of talent
| greatly prefers remote work - perhaps. But _unjust_? Aren 't
| you taking it a bit far? You don't have the right to remote
| work.
| kevingadd wrote:
| If the outcome of the policies is an unjust outcome I don't
| think the term is inaccurate, even if the common use of it
| refers to one's legal rights.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'd consider it unjust if I was hired for a remote role and
| they changed that deal later.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It's just business. Everything is subject to change all
| the time. Unfair, rude, etc, but unjust is a bridge too
| far.
|
| Unjust might be society not offering a sufficient safety
| net to ride out income volatility.
| bill_joy_fanboy wrote:
| "Unjust" is really just a matter of personal taste. Your
| claim that it's just has no more validity than a claim
| that it's unjust.
|
| Saying "it's just business" is just a canned phrase for
| minimizing a general dismissive attitude toward the
| welfare of workers.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Saying "it's just business" is just a canned phrase for
| minimizing a general dismissive attitude toward the
| welfare of workers. reply
|
| I don't think I am dismissive toward the welfare of
| workers. I strongly advocate for government helping
| workers by at least increasing/streamlining the process
| of receiving unemployment benefits and/or taxpayer funded
| efforts to re-train in the event of loss of income or
| even relocation assistance.
| rangerelf wrote:
| It's "just business" to the company, it's very personal
| to anyone affected by it.
|
| I find "it's just business" and "it's not personal" to be
| some of the most insulting and gaslighting phrases in the
| English language, by how they dehumanize the person at
| the receiving end of them.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If I stop shopping at a specific vendor, I am doing the
| same thing. The person operating the farmer's market
| stand or a food truck or whatever is a human too, but
| it's perfectly fine to say that you will no longer
| patronize that business.
|
| People are affected by loss of income, and it is tragic.
| I don't think a buyer ceasing to buy from a seller is
| injustice, regardless if the relationship is
| employer/employee or customer/business.
|
| It is society that should be providing the stability
| necessary for business to just be business. If a business
| makes a mistake, it is not unjust for the business to
| correct course which could involve changing its terms
| with its vendors (including employees).
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The analogy falls apart somewhat when the vendor is
| prohibited from selling their product to others and the
| buyer provides their healthcare. Employment relationships
| are different than other kinds of business relationships
| and the law recognizes that.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I find entitlement to be be one of the things wrong with
| the world today. It's really a testament that we can have
| such opposing viewpoints at the same time without
| worrying about consequences, huh?
| itishappy wrote:
| Sorry to be blunt, but... so? Take the phrase away and it
| becomes "a business decision" which is just as
| impersonal, but that's an honest reflection of how
| decisions are made. Are you arguing against businesses
| making decisions or just the language?
| carlmr wrote:
| Shouldn't businesses abide by contracts, even verbal
| ones? If you were hired in office, went remote and then
| RTO now I understand your viewpoint. But if the company
| hired you for a remote role that's part of the contract,
| and RTO is breach of contract.
| Onavo wrote:
| Yes, promissory estoppel is a thing.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if the company hired you for a remote role that 's
| part of the contract, and RTO is breach of contract_
|
| Sure, and the contract should be terminated.
|
| Within the context of this article, learning you may be
| funding sanctioned activities is a valid reason to
| revisit your business assumptions.
| weard_beard wrote:
| RTO mandates for remote hired workers aught to be
| considered defacto constructive dismissal and grounds for a
| civil suit for lost wages. The fact that companies can pull
| this kind of bait and switch is A.B.S.O.L.U.T.E.L.Y. a
| miscarriage of justice that is harming families and ruining
| lives.
| bill_joy_fanboy wrote:
| > You don't have the right to remote work.
|
| What I have a "right" to is ultimately a matter of personal
| judgment. Isn't it?
| airstrike wrote:
| I'm all for WFH but a right implies someone else has an
| obligation
| 8200_unit wrote:
| I disagree. How does someone else have an obligation to
| my freedom of speech?
| ricardobeat wrote:
| There is nothing to disagree here, it's the philosophical
| definition of a right. It only exists if there is an
| obligation on the other side, in this case, to allow you
| to speak freely and without interference (applies both to
| individuals and the state).
| bulatb wrote:
| Only for positive rights, and not always for those
| either.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| No. You have an obligation not to violate my negative
| rights, too, _e.g._ we prohibit murder but don't
| guarantee a right to life at any cost.
| bulatb wrote:
| My battery ran out before I could delete. I had another
| sentence there at first about "unless you call respecting
| rights an obligation," but I took it out because I didn't
| want to make a mess. To me an obligation in this context
| means the thing which is created by a positive right.
| (IME when someone uses "obligation" for negative rights,
| it's often for a bad-faith argument relying on the
| vagueness of "rights" to score a rhetorical point.) The
| analogous but different thing that some would say arises
| from a negative right, to me, would be described some
| other way.
|
| Talking about rights is fraught and frustrating and
| mostly pointless, and my comment wasn't worth writing,
| but there's nothing I can do about it now.
| itishappy wrote:
| Judgement? Sure. Personal? I sure hope not. I can declare
| myself the rightful recipient of all cash, but so what?
| Rights need some buy-in from society.
| krunck wrote:
| What kind of "right" are we talking about here?
| Constitutional? Natural?
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Not remotely. Wow. You have a right to seek whatever you
| want, but seek only.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" I really hope this doesn't become ammunition for
| companies who force unjust and unnecessary return to office
| policies."_
|
| It's post-9/11 all over again. That we would destroy our
| liberty and our way of life out of a million-fold
| overreaction to a minor provocation from North Korea--same
| paranoia, same mistakes.
|
| Even on HN, reasonable, intelligent people here seriously
| propose upending the lives of tens of millions of Americans,
| and their families too--for putative national security. RTO,
| to hunt the spies; to surveil every American worker and study
| their faces carefully and make damn sure- _no matter_ at what
| cost-they are who they say they are. What kind of society
| does that make? That 's not America.
| acdha wrote:
| I don't like it either but it is a real concern. We can't
| ignore it but we can try to frame the conversation correctly:
| we should be able to say this isn't happening because we have
| good security policies and monitoring, etc.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Reminds me of https://blog.knowbe4.com/how-a-north-korean-fake-
| it-worker-t... - I seem to remember it coming up here at the
| time.
| jonhohle wrote:
| I'm sure all the money the US government put into Fisker was
| already gone by then. A decade later and even more reminders of
| what a terrible "investment" that was.
| karpatic wrote:
| Fisker continues to widen my eyes. Unfortunately.
| azinman2 wrote:
| What was all the money?
|
| It's so far worked out for Tesla, and at least of the major
| auto companies in the US they're still alive when they could
| have gone under previously.
|
| Supporting new private industry is good policy, if done with
| balance. China has been employing this very successfully
| industry after industry.
| starik36 wrote:
| US govt. invested in Tesla? That's news to me.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| DOE gave them a $465 million loan to build out their
| Fremont factory during the height of the GFC: https://www.e
| nergy.gov/lpo/tesla#:~:text=In%20January%202010...
| ccheney wrote:
| adding context to the above comment:
|
| > Tesla repaid its $465 million loan from the US
| Department of Energy (DoE) nine years early in 2013
| protimewaster wrote:
| They also have received various other grants, including
| ~$17 million for chargers.
| starik36 wrote:
| A relative worked at Fisker recently. The loan you are talking
| about was in 2009. That version of Fisker went out of business
| in 2014.
|
| The most "recent iteration" of Fisker was basically a company
| from scratch. It was only called Fisker because it's original
| founder (Henrik Fisker) retained the rights to the name and
| logo.
|
| This time around there weren't any loans from the US govt.
| kiba wrote:
| Which also failed which proved that the founder is a bad bet
| and that if the US government chooses to invest again, it
| should steer clear of that dude.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Can't decide if irony or surprise at the empirical naivete
| is surprising me more about a HN comment advocating for
| blacklisting once-failed founders.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Imagine losing your job and then hearing that a NK spy stole
| millions, resulting in your job loss.
|
| Hiring in IT is a joke, there is an obsession with gamifying
| everything resulting in only people willing to play the game
| actually getting hired.
| xanthor wrote:
| It doesn't say millions were stolen. The indictment says North
| Koreans were paid millions for their work.
|
| I wonder what the quality of work was like
| Maarten88 wrote:
| With all the anger over illegal immigrants taking US jobs, as a
| European it surprises me that nobody in the US seems to even
| mention the idea of punishing the employer for employing illegal
| workers.
|
| If I want to hire someone (local or remote) as an employer here,
| I better make sure the worker has a valid working permit. Fines
| for non-compliance towards the employer are huge, even for a
| single day of work. All paperwork has to be complete before any
| work is done. Even when hiring through intermediary companies who
| guarantee it's all legal, liability and fines remain in place for
| the ultimate employer if it turns out to be not so.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > punishing the employer for employing an illegal worker
|
| It's already the law.
|
| This is why employers mandate I-9 forms as part of employment.
|
| This is part of the larger indictment against Christine Chapman
| by the DoJ, who found she was falsifying employment
| verification documents and giving access to North Koreans in
| return for a portion of the embezzled sums.
|
| Stories like this are also why there has been a major push for
| RTO.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Stories like this are also why there has been a major push
| for RTO.
|
| Citation needed. I find this _very_ unlikely as the root
| cause.
| varispeed wrote:
| It's about investment funds and shareholders owning
| commercial property who push for RTO out of fear of their
| portfolio going down in value if people are not using the
| offices.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _investment funds and shareholders owning commercial
| property_
|
| Are you in San Francisco? This is a conspiracy theory I
| hear a lot in San Francisco.
| alephnerd wrote:
| It's a dumb conspiracy theory at the macro-scale, and the
| overlap between CBRE or JLL and a company's board is
| minimal
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| It is, but I'm curious about why it's so popular. Is it a
| Musk thing?
| alephnerd wrote:
| It's an HN+Reddit thing.
|
| The userbases overlap significantly now.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _already the law_
|
| There is practically zero enforcement. Criminalise hiring
| illegal workers while stepping up enforcement and you
| dramatically reduce the value of illegal migration while
| shutting down large sections of the economy, thereby
| prompting supply-side inflation.
|
| We don't do it because this is a politically convenient
| middle ground that keeps illegal labor in the system while
| segregating it from competing with most of us. (Put another
| way: we have a regulated and an unregulated labor market. We
| like the fruits from the latter.)
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| This is the next key talking point for a winning candidate,
| and may be the ultimate solution to US immigration. It can
| and will gain popular support, but it will take someone
| sneaky enough to gain their party's support on other
| matters first; either after becoming the party's nominee or
| after being elected. Either one.
|
| (If you propose this _after_ being elected you might only
| last one term though; it 's a bit of a rug pull. Better to
| pull the rug out from under your party rather than the
| voters.)
| BadHumans wrote:
| The anger over illegal immigrants taking US jobs is mostly
| fearmongering from the people employing illegal immigrants.
| mkatx wrote:
| Wait, the ones who are getting a great deal on labor costs
| are the ones complaining about the source of that great deal?
|
| I'm not so sure..
| BadHumans wrote:
| The current Republican nominee ran his entire campaign on
| hating immigrants and has been known to hire illegal
| immigrants. They don't actually want to crackdown on it
| they just want to campaign on it.
| mkatx wrote:
| I see that, yes. But they will still create legislation
| against those means.
| varispeed wrote:
| Legislation is meaningless if it is not going to be
| enforced or if it will be used to destroy competition. As
| in law enforcement cannot deal with all cases, but they
| certainly can be nudged to deal with businesses that
| corrupt government doesn't want operating.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Lucy with the football, bro.
|
| It's a playbook as old as time. "At least we're not <the
| other guy>"
|
| When slavery was a thing, white southern workers made a lot
| less than northern workers. Racial superiority pumped the
| suckers up. Johnny Reb volunteered to be slaughtered so
| some aristocrat could own people.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Most of the illegal immigrant hoopla has been performative
| bullshit to make to easier to control employees. If you're in
| the chicken processing business or need casual labor, it's a
| hell of alot cheaper to avoid paying for social security,
| worker's compensation, etc by hiring people whom you can easily
| exploit by dangling the sword of ICE over their heads.
|
| The US governance model segments immigration and work
| regulation - the former is a federal matter, the latter is
| almost exclusively regulated by the states (including enforced
| of federal rules).
|
| In recent years as conservatives have veered into a more
| overtly racist and reactionary movement that's shifted a bit.
| DFHippie wrote:
| Legislation is frequently proposed to do just this: require all
| employers to use E-Verify to ensure they don't hire illegal
| workers. The same people who are constantly firing up voters
| about immigration are opposed to this. The political issue is
| valuable to them, as is cheap, cowed, disposable labor. And
| they know if they succeeded in shipping their workers back over
| the border there would be economic and political mayhem.
|
| I expect endless demagoguery about immigration and performative
| cruelty, but nothing that will challenge the bottom line.
|
| Here's a recent bit of commentary on E-Verify:
| https://jabberwocking.com/the-long-sad-story-of-e-verify/
| gwbas1c wrote:
| The people who complain about illegal immigrant labor in the US
| also like their cheap chicken and other fruits from illegal
| immigrant labor.
|
| It's a weird case where one business undercuts another by
| hiring cheap labor, and then the other business has to do the
| same thing or else risk going out of business.
|
| Better enforcement might help, but remember, people like cheap
| chicken; it doesn't matter which way you vote.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| I don't like cheap chicken
| silisili wrote:
| There are legal means of hiring seasonal workers.
|
| If it needs fixing in law, let's do that... not this weird
| system we have now of turning our head the other way and
| waving it off as necessary while ignoring any criticism of
| said crazy system.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| In the US, there is no reliable way to verify employment
| eligibility. What systems do exist tend to produce many false
| positives and false negatives. Furthermore, you are required to
| accept documents the demonstrate employment eligibility at face
| value, even if they are likely to be fraudulent.
|
| In industries that famously have many illegal employees, the
| companies have cover because the employees always have
| fraudulent documents. And since the company is required to
| accept those documents and not discriminate, the company can't
| be held liable for hiring them even though they are illegal.
|
| Underlying this situation is that it is unconstitutional for
| the Federal government to issue mandatory ids to citizens that
| could be used to reliably determine employment eligibility.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you are required to accept documents the demonstrate
| employment eligibility at face value, even if they are likely
| to be fraudulent_
|
| Genuine question: source?
|
| > _mandatory ids to citizens that could be used to reliably
| determine employment eligibility_
|
| Yes, state-issued IDs, the infallible line keeping underage
| drinkers out of bars.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| It is against Federal law to reject any reasonable
| documentation that satisfies the I-9 requirements.
| Historically, you can bootstrap your way to meeting those
| requirements with not much more than affidavits and basic
| forgery.
|
| There are many people who are US citizens that due to
| history or circumstances have no reliable documentation of
| such with which to bootstrap an ID -- I have people with no
| foundational documents in my own family. The system is
| designed to enable these people to bootstrap their
| paperwork without a reliable root document, which is of
| course exploitable by people that are in the US illegally.
|
| State-issued IDs do not contain sufficient information to
| ensure eligibility for employment under Federal law.
| cj wrote:
| > Genuine question: source?
|
| https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/i-
| 9...
|
| I'm an employer, and this is the form that needs to be
| filled out when we hire someone.
|
| Notice the 2nd page of eligible documentation. A "School
| ID" and "birth certificate" are adequate documentation for
| employment. Both can be easily forged and difficult to
| verify.
|
| Also notice the bottom of the 2nd page: it allows (for a
| temporary period) a "receipt" of the document to be
| considered acceptable if it is "stolen" - meaning you don't
| even need to have the physical document at all.
|
| And here's the kicker: This form does not need to be
| submitted to any government agency. (You literally just
| fill it out and put it in a filing cabinet)
| erikerikson wrote:
| Turning away potentially underage drinkers is encouraged
| (and not doing so badly punished) but denying someone legal
| allowable employment is subject to litigation.
|
| "ANTI-DISCRIMINATION NOTICE: All employees can choose which
| acceptable documentation to present for Form I-9. Employers
| cannot ask employees for documentation to verify
| information in Section 1, or specify which acceptable
| documentation employees must present for Section 2 or
| Supplement B, Reverification and Rehire. Treating employees
| differently based on their citizenship, immigration status,
| or national origin may be illegal."[0]
|
| [0] https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/form
| s/i-9...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| More like they can comply with their minimal legal obligation
| while accepting documentation that is readily identifiable as
| fraudulent.
|
| People not motivated to seek shall not find.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| The documents are fraudulent but valid. It violates Federal
| law for an employer to not accept these documents if
| offered.
|
| People are motivated by not becoming Federal criminals.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > In the US, there is no reliable way to verify employment
| eligibility.
|
| Enact a law to punish the employers and that would change
| overnight.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| There is already a Federal law that punishes employers who
| do not accept documents that satisfy the I-9 requirements.
| Illegal immigrants have documents that satisfy these
| requirements.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| Perhaps I should have said _enforce_ the law. Falsified
| documents should not divert blame from the employers.
| pumanoir wrote:
| The scammers in question use stolen US citizens' identities.
| Same thing happens in Europe to a lesser degree.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > it surprises me that nobody in the US seems to even mention
| the idea of punishing the employer for employing illegal
| workers
|
| This has been my proposed solution to the immigration problem
| in the US. Stop attempting to corral the people coming over,
| and shift 100% of your resources toward punishing those who
| employ them. How many people will attempt to sneak into the US
| when no one is willing to hire them?
|
| I also view this as a "put your money where your mouth is"
| stance. It changes it from a political issue into one with a
| practical solution, and the people benefiting from cheap labor
| would have to be very creative to find fault with it.
| anon115 wrote:
| too much work im gonna hire the immigrant sorry not sorry~
| danans wrote:
| > it surprises me that nobody in the US seems to even mention
| the idea of punishing the employer for employing illegal
| workers.
|
| The anti-immigrant politicians can't punish the employers
| because they would be punishing their own donors.
|
| If that sounds like a contradiction, consider that
| undocumented/illegal immigrants are effectively pawns who have
| no political power in the system, and the contradiction
| disappears entirely.
| ijustwanttovote wrote:
| If there is an argument for RTO, it would be this.
|
| _Stu Sjouwerman: We were hiring a fairly specific, hard-to-find
| software engineer who had background in AI. We have a number of
| AI initiatives, and so we needed a software engineer to support
| all those initiatives.
|
| Jessica Mendoza: The job was posted on online job forums, and
| pretty soon, resumes started to flow in from all over the
| country, and one candidate stood out. He said his name was Kyle.
|
| Stu Sjouwerman: "Mr. Kyle" quote, unquote, air quotes, had
| experience with exactly everything that we needed. It was a very
| good interview. He was very open. He talked about his strengths
| and weaknesses, indicated where he felt he needed additional
| training and indicated a career path. And so, was the perfect
| interviewee, which made us move to the next step.
|
| Jessica Mendoza: After conducting background checks, Stu's
| company decided to hire Kyle as a remote employee. They sent him
| a work laptop to an address in Washington State and started the
| onboarding process. But almost immediately, it became clear that
| Kyle was not who he said he was.
|
| Stu Sjouwerman: At that point in time, our team started seeing
| very concerning traffic on that laptop.
|
| Jessica Mendoza: What kind of concerning traffic?
|
| Stu Sjouwerman: Well, Kyle immediately started downloading
| malware. We immediately saw that a whole bunch of things were
| happening that should not be. We tried to get in touch with him
| and asked if he needed any help. I think this was through Slack,
| and he said, "Yes, I am trying to debug my router and I'm
| following instructions from a list." And this is where it became
| very, very iffy, very fast.
|
| Jessica Mendoza: The company shut down Kyle's laptop and quickly
| fired him. And then, they investigated. What exactly was Kyle
| doing? The answer took them completely by surprise.
|
| Stu Sjouwerman: Yes, we have egg on our face because we hired a
| fake North Korean IT worker, but this is what happened. And if it
| can happen to us, it can happen to almost anybody.
|
| Jessica Mendoza: It's kind of unbelievable that you hired a North
| Korean spy as one of your IT guys.
|
| Stu Sjouwerman: Yes. That is pretty scary. And there are hundreds
| if not thousands that are actually, as we speak right now, in
| this same situation and delivering work for United States
| companies._
|
| https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/your-new-hire-may-b...
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Did they not meet him face-to-face? It's a small price to pay
| for confirmation that you're talking to a real person. Even if
| not, you at least have someone's face and information to report
| to the authorities.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| lol. exactly the same as happened with off shoring in the late
| 90s. do people not learn?
|
| first they hire telemarketing grunts. then HR gets complacent and
| normalize not doing any work. then they start using the same
| techniques for IT workers since for HR they're just more
| expensive telemarketing.
| simple10 wrote:
| Articles say the guy was an AI developer. But how did he actually
| steal money from Fisker?
|
| He installed malware on his work computer. Was this then used by
| North Korea to hack Fisker's internal systems and syphon of money
| somehow? Maybe I missed the details in one of the articles linked
| below.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" But how did he actually steal money from Fisker?"_
|
| AFAICT, he merely worked for them. The only cash flows
| mentioned in the indictment [0] are simple wages.
|
| The title is a bit misleading. "Millions" is the total haul of
| the North Korean remote workers over some 60-ish (??)
| companies. Fisker by itself paid no more than $214,596.00 (page
| 27, as "Company 6"). The article focuses on Fisker because it's
| an automotive news site.
|
| [0] https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/media/1352191/dl (pdf)
| oleg_antonyan wrote:
| A simple IT guy has access to company's finances in such way to
| move millions. Am I the only one who smells either ridiculous
| incompetence or plain fraud by the company trying to cover up
| "something"?
| axus wrote:
| That was my first reaction, but everything really is
| computerized these days. I felt the same way about Snowden's
| access.
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