Two US Nationals Sentenced to 18 Months Each for Hosting Laptops in DPRK IT Worker Fraud

A US Department of Justice announcement on May 6, 2026, states that Matthew Issac Knoot of Nashville, Tennessee, and Erick Ntekereze Prince of New York were each sentenced to 18 months in prison for facilitating fraudulent remote information technology worker schemes that funneled revenue to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The two men hosted laptop computers at their residences that US companies shipped to addresses the companies believed belonged to the IT workers they had hired. In reality the laptops connected DPRK nationals who performed the work while concealing their identities and locations, per the Justice Department release from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.

The scope of the conduct involved at least two separate cases in which victim US companies dispatched company-owned laptops to the defendants’ homes. The laptops served as the physical presence inside the United States that allowed DPRK workers to bypass sanctions and access corporate networks under the guise of domestic or authorized remote employees.

The sentences mark the operational closure of these two facilitation cases. Prior to sentencing the defendants faced charges for their roles in the scheme; the 18-month terms now take effect immediately following the May 6, 2026, court rulings. Both men must serve the full prison terms before any supervised release begins.

Downstream the convictions trigger standard post-sentencing asset forfeiture reviews and require the defendants to cooperate with ongoing investigations into larger DPRK IT worker networks. Federal agencies must now update screening protocols for remote IT hires to include stricter geolocation and device-telemetry verification, while companies that fell victim face mandatory breach notifications and potential sanctions-compliance audits.

The cases also activate interagency information sharing between the Justice Department, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, and immigration authorities to track similar residential forwarding arrangements.

This sentencing forms part of a documented US enforcement push against DPRK revenue-generation operations that rely on disguised IT labor. The Justice Department has pursued multiple cases involving US-based facilitators who provided the domestic footprint necessary for sanctioned North Korean workers to obtain contracts with American firms.