The Wall Street Journal, 13 August 2026 — 869,000 views

Half of $80,000. For one meeting a week.

That was the offer. Show up to one scrum call every week under my own name, and take half the salary. A North Korean team did the actual work.

They picked me because I am a real programmer. I passed the live coding tests myself. That is the part nobody wants to hear.

Book the call — $400 What we cover

30 minutes. You leave with my referral list — the firms that actually catch them, and the red teams we avoided.

Derrik Goon on camera in the Wall Street Journal documentary, captioned American Facilitator

The Wall Street Journal put my name and what I did on screen. I am not hiding from any of it.

1,000+companies the team applied to in three months
9of them hired us, in the US and the UK
1meeting a week was all that was asked of me
0companies caught it before a reporter called

The call

Thirty minutes, $400, five things nobody else can tell you.

This is not a demo and there is nothing to install. It is me, walking you through how it actually worked, in the order it happened to me — and then the two things that decide what it costs you if one is already inside.

01

The hardware

What physically sits in the room. Your corporate laptop, where it ships and why, what gets plugged into it, and who is really typing.

  • Why the address is Ohio and not Pyongyang
  • How the machine is set up on day one
  • What a farm of them looks like
02

The tactics

How the applications, the interviews and the day job are actually run — including the handful of moments where it nearly came apart.

  • What gets rehearsed before a call
  • The questions that made us sweat
  • How the work gets done once you are hired
03

Who they target

Which roles, which companies, which recruiters, and which Americans they approach to hold the laptop. I was one of them.

  • The job titles that come up again and again
  • Why staffing agencies are the soft way in
  • How they picked and pitched me
04

How to scan your current staff

The uncomfortable one. Not how to stop the next applicant — how to go through the people already on your payroll and find out.

  • What to pull, in what order, without tipping anyone off
  • The patterns that repeat: addresses, devices, payroll, hours
  • Who to start with when you cannot check everyone
05

What it costs you if you find one

This stops being an HR problem the moment money moved. I will walk you through what actually happens next and who you have to call.

  • Why paying a sanctioned worker is a violation even if nobody knew
  • What the Americans who held the laptops were charged with
  • The order to do things in on day one
★the referral list

The firms that actually catch them

You leave the call with my list: the companies whose process we could not get through, and the red teams whose name coming up meant we moved on to an easier target. I am not paid by any of them and I do not take a cut. It is just what we learned the hard way, and where I would send you.

The part nobody expects

Your technical screen worked perfectly. That is the problem.

Most people assume these operations fall over at the live coding test. Mine never did, because I really can code. I built a business selling mining hardware before any of this started. The screen asked whether the person on the call could program, and the honest answer was yes.

What no part of your process asked was whether that person would be the one doing the job afterwards.

"They would schedule up interviews and then I'd sit and do these interviews with 'em. All I had to do was just show up and, you know, land the job."

Me, in the documentary
From The North Korean Operatives Hiding Inside U.S. Companies, The Wall Street Journal, 13 August 2026.

Fit

Worth half an hour if any of this is true.

"My mind is blown right now. Initially I thought maybe he was just lazy or sloppy. Now I realise there was mal-intent."

A founder who hired one of the people I worked with, in the same documentary

Next step

Pick a time. Bring one open role.

Thirty minutes, $400, the five things above, and every question you have. You leave with the referral list whether or not we ever speak again.

If you want the whole method afterwards, I teach it as a short course — the forty-five checks my own operation would have failed. I will tell you about it on the call and you can ignore me.

Questions

The ones people actually ask me.

Why should I trust you?

You should not, on my word. Watch the documentary. The Wall Street Journal spent a year on it and put my name and what I did on screen. Everything I tell you can be checked against what is already public.

I am not selling software and I am not asking for access to anything you own. I am telling you what happened, and you decide what it is worth.

You passed the coding tests yourself? So the work was real?

The interviews were real, yes. I sat them, I answered the questions and I wrote the code. That is why it kept working.

What was not real was who did the job afterwards. That is the whole trick, and it is why a harder coding test does not fix it.

Did you know they were North Korean?

Not at the start, no. I was told he was Brazilian. I asked him outright later and he got angry with me for asking.

Over the months the Journal spent talking to me I came round to what was actually going on. I am not going to pretend I worked it out on day one, because I did not.

Is this a redemption thing?

No. I got paid to do something that hurt real people, including a man whose identity was used at nine companies he had never heard of. Nothing I do now undoes that.

What I can do is explain exactly how it worked, in enough detail that it stops working. That is the whole offer.

What will you not do?

I will not touch your systems, your data or your candidates' personal information, and I do not run software against anything you own.

I will not name individuals as suspects. If something in your process looks wrong I will say what looks wrong and you take it from there.

I will not comment on anyone's live legal situation, including my own.

What does it cost?

$400 for the thirty minutes. The referral list comes with it, and it is yours to keep whatever you decide afterwards.

I charge because the free version turns into people wanting the story rather than the fix, and because a paid half hour is one both of us take seriously.

If you want the full method there is a course — the forty-five checks, with the twelve that would actually have caught me marked out. I mention it once on the call and then drop it.

What is on the referral list, and are you paid for it?

The firms whose hiring process we could not get through, and the red teams whose name coming up in a job description made us move on to an easier target.

No, I am not paid by any of them and I do not take a referral fee. If I ever do, this page will say so before you book.

I will not publish a list of companies that failed to catch us. Some of them are victims and none of them need that from me.