(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department on Monday charged four North Koreans in a brazen scam to pose as IT workers with stolen credentials and use them to get hired by U.S.-based companies and scam those companies out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Kim Kwang Jin, Kang Tae Bok, Jong Pong Ju and Chang Nam Il are all allegedly “citizens of North Korea who used stolen and false personally identifiable information to pose as non-North Koreans and thereby obtain employment with technology companies, gain victim companies’ trust, obtain access to virtual currency assets controlled by victim companies, steal those virtual currency assets, and launder the proceeds of that activity.”

Federal authorities in Atlanta, Georgia said that the four allegedly stole $900,000 in cryptocurrency from one company, according to prosecutors, and the scheme has been ongoing since at least 2020.

In one instance, a U.S. company hired who they thought was Malaysian IT worker “Bryan Cho,” but in reality they hired Jong Pong Ju, who was a North Korean bad actor, according to the Justice Department.

Hiring “Byran Cho” also allowed for other North Koreans to be brought into the fold, including Chang Nam Il, the department said.

“On or about March 29, 2022, defendant KIM KW ANG JIN, without Company-1’s knowledge or consent, modified the source code for two smart contracts owned and controlled by Company-1 that resided on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains. Defendant KIM KW ANG JIN’ s modifications to these smart contracts changed the rules governing the withdrawal of virtual currency from two funding pools controlled by Company-1,” the court record says.

The four are not in the U.S., the department noted.

In total, the Justice Department seized 29 known or suspected “laptop farms” across 16 states, and seized 29 financial accounts used to launder illicit funds and 21 fraudulent websites, and charged four North Korean nationals, six Chinese nationals and two Taiwanese nationals for their involvement in separate information technology worker schemes, DOJ officials told reporters on a call with reporters on Monday.

In Massachusetts, the Justice Department alleges that nine more North Koreans posed as IT workers and were able to cause $3 million in losses from more than 100 U.S. companies, including some Fortune 500 companies over a four-year period, as well as steal “export controls and US military technology off the company’s network,” the official said.

Kejia Wang, a U.S. citizen, worked with others abroad to “to facilitate the criminal schemes” alleged by the Justice Department. According to senior DOJ officials, Wang was arrested on Monday.

Similar to the case unsealed earlier today in Georgia, workers posing as tech workers used fraudulent identification cards to dupe U.S. companies., according to the department.

Authorities said that it is not only profitable for the North Koreans, but they attempt to steal U.S. secrets as well.

“These schemes target and steal from U.S. companies and are designed to evade sanctions and fund the North Korean regime’s illicit programs, including its weapons programs,” John A. Eisenberg, Assistant Attorney General for the Department’s National Security Division, said in a release. “The Justice Department, along with our law enforcement, private sector, and international partners, will persistently pursue and dismantle these cyber-enabled revenue generation networks.”

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RAJ Sports named CLARE HAMILL interim President for the new Portland WNBA expansion franchise and JOHN TORRIS EVP/Commercial Strategy & Business Development for RAJ Sports. The company also promoted CHRISTOPHER ORECHIA to VP/Corporate Partnerships for RAJ Sports and RON CAMPBELL to VP/Ticketing for the NWSL Portland Thorns (RAJ Sports).

USC women’s basketball named SELENA CASTILLO as the program’s GM. Castillo most recently served over seven years at Duke, including as Dir of External Affairs for women’s basketball. Prior to her time at Duke, Castillo worked at the Tampa Bay Sports Commission and Event Development Institute (USC).

Georgia Tech men’s basketball has hired Jazz VP/Basketball Intelligence CHUCK TERRELL to an “administrative position.” He will reportedly “be in a general manager role” for the program (ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, 7/2).

The new Cincinnati Regional Sports Commission has hired Warren County Convention & Visitors Bureau Sports Tourism Dir BEN HUFFMAN as its first Exec Dir (CINCINNATI BUSINESS COURIER, 7/2).

Boise State Athletics promoted KATIE TULLER DORES to Associate AD/Athletic Personnel Services, MATT MAYER to Associate AD/CFO, JAKE MANKIN to Associate AD/Chief Revenue Officer, and CHRIS KUTZ to Associate AD/External Affairs (Boise State).

To have your personnel announcements included in “Executive Transactions,” please send information to careers@sportsbusinessjournal.com.

Privacy Manager

The smartwatch has become the default for fitness tracking for many runners and athletes. The screens on our wrists allow us to leave our phones behind and focus in, while still having up-to-date workout tracking at our fingertips. As the tech gets better, though, it’s also gotten smaller, and more compact screen-less options are all the rage now. There is the smart ring, led by Oura, but lately Whoop has been leading the charge with a new screen-free form factor, the fitness band.

With so many similarities between the two leading devices, I figured most interested parties would need to choose one or the other. So, for the past month, I’ve been trying out both simultaneously to find which one is the more accurate fitness tracker—and more importantly which one I preferred using at the end of a month of workouts.

After four weeks of two to three days a week of mixed cardio and strength training, I’ve discovered that the tech behind both is great, but when it comes to exercise and fitness, I prefer the Whoop experience. Here’s why.

Working out with Oura Ring 4

I love wearing my Oura Ring. It fits great, only needs to be charged once a week or so, and is the most innocuous wearable I own. Even when I’m sweating on the elliptical, it doesn’t slip off. It’s perfectly comfortable for working out in. The rest of the experience is not as perfect.

To start, if you want any info while you’re exercising you need to get out your phone. The Oura app is primarily focused on sleep, lacking more advanced workout tracking, but it does have basic functionality for recording heart rate during activity.

If you’re taking a more passive approach to recording, Oura does have automatic detection and any activity you do will get recorded, with all the same info as if you’d done it manually. If all else fails, you can add workouts manually, which I found myself having to do on occasion of a shorter weightlifting session. Since this didn’t lead to enough sustained heart rate activity, no workout was detected. In general, I found the detection much better for running and cardio workouts.

Oura Ring 4 – Black

Working out with Whoop MG

If you’re used to a watch, the Whoop band can have a bit of an adjustment period. I can’t tell you how many times I have checked for the time, only to remember there’s not even a small clock screen. But once I honed in on the band as a pure training assistant, I started to really fall in love with it.

Like with my Oura Ring, in lieu of a watch face, I found myself working out with my phone out. But compared to Oura, the Whoop app is way more tailored to fitness tracking. It’s not just sleep, but your daily stress and strain are always there up top, easily readable each time you open the app. When it comes to recording workouts, the Whoop app boasts an impressively long an in-depth list of activities, ranging from badminton to bartending. Once you start, you get all your vital metrics in real time, including your overall workout stress level which measures the ongoing intensity of your activity.

As you can see, the Whoop screen on the left gives you a lot more information. It’s vital stuff too, like heart rate and calories burned. If you let it, you can even see your heart rate, heart rate zone, and activity duration on your lock screen for quick mid-workout checks.

I also found, especially when I was sleeping in it, the battery life to last about a week, a bit less than promised. If you’re only using it for workouts the Whoop MG may last the advertised 14 days.

It’s worth noting that my main goal for workouts is weight loss, and I as an ex-runner I tend to do a lot of cardio. This is a great fit for fitness trackers, like Whoop and Oura, that mainly rely on heart rate monitoring. Which is mostly to say if you’re going to the gym to lift, there’s not much you’ll get out of it, but it’ll be perfect for tracking cardio.

Whoop also comes with a more confusing subscription model. When you purchase your band you choose the named subscription with it. If you want the Whoop 5.0 band, you can chose the starter One for $200 a year or Peak for $239. The latter includes more features and a nifty wireless charging pack. The Life subscription comes with all these features unlocked and a Whoop MG (which stands for medical grade and includes an ECG and blood pressure insights) for a total of $359 a year. Since it’s all wrapped up in one, the initial cost will be less than an Oura Ring… until that one year mark comes around and you realize you don’t really own your device.

WHOOP MG – Life

A Quick Note on Sleep

This is a comparison focused on exercise and fitness features, but considering that A) sleep is a key part of your holistic health and B) these devices encourage you where them to sleep, I felt it important to briefly touch on.

At the start of the testing period, I set myself the goal of sleeping in both of the devices every night. It took less than a week for me to realize I was not a fan of sleeping with my Whoop band on, similar to how I hate sleeping with smartwatches. It’s uncomfortable and feels weirdly restraining.

In terms of sleep tracking data and sleep/readiness scores, my readouts from the devices were extremely consistent with one another. Oura and Whoop use the same metrics to determine these scores. This means it really just came down to comfort—and if that’s the deciding factor then Oura is the one I much prefer for sleep tracking.

Oura Ring 4 vs Whoop MG, Who Wins?

In general, I found there to be pros and cons to each of the screen-less wearables. With both the Oura Ring and Whoop, I felt pretty reliant on my phone if I wanted minute-to-minute vitals. Since a majority of this data is taken from heart rate, they also both prioritize cardio. For me, that lines up with my priorities, but for the plenty of people laser focused on their gains, there are mixed results here. Still, after a month of training with both I found it easy to make a decision.

Winner: Whoop

The Whoop band and its app feel more purposefully designed for fitness. While I definitely prefer the Oura Ring as a sleep tracker, the Whoop app and user experience is deeper and more versatile, casting a wide net for all types of athletes and performers.

WHOOP MG – Life