A sanctioned North Korean oil tanker appears to have posed as a soon-to-be scrapped freighter thousands of miles away this week, in what experts said may have been a test of a new identity-spoofing scheme to conceal illicit activities.

According to ship-tracking data from MarineTraffic, the DPRK-flagged oil tanker Nam Dae Bong (IMO 9132612) berthed next to the Malaysia-flagged chemical tanker PSP Grace near Kuala Lumpur on April 15, in what would have been a prohibited ship-to-ship transfer in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2375.

The