The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned eight people and organizations tied to a North Korean scheme that brought in close to $800 million last year, much of it moved through cryptocurrency, by tricking American companies into hiring fake tech workers. The money went straight toward building nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, known as OFAC, announced on March 12, 2026, that it had blacklisted six individuals and two entities for their part in a fraud network run by North Korea’s government. The money raised in 2024 was used to fund the country’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs, breaking both U.S. law and United Nations sanctions.

North Korean tech…