Absolutely ran into fake CVs and people farming off the interview to 3rd party interview factories. Not at all surprised this was happening. Can’t say I ran into North Koreans but a lot of recruitment agencies were passing people on with little to no vetting. You’d interview someone on camera and they’d be a different person once everything was signed. Given how hard it was to correct that they’d still walk away with a few weeks salary, even in your states with at will contracts it’s super difficult to let anyone go.
The UK has been right up there on the highest number of cameras per person in the world, this isn’t surprising. They’ve been at the forefront of this before China took the records.