'Is This Also Fraud? Unbelievable...' 1 in 4 People Exposed to Financial Scams, Average Loss of 16.37 Million KRW

The Most Common Fraud Type, 'Phone Financial Fraud' Continues from 2018 to 2019
Investment Scams like Stocks and Derivative Funds > Loan Scams > Credit Card Frauds
Victims Repeat... 75% Suffer Once, 25% Experience Multiple Incidents

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Ju-yeon] As financial fraud schemes become increasingly sophisticated, it has been found that one in four people have been exposed to financial fraud. Among them, 1.3 out of 10 actually suffered damage, and about 2.2 reached the brink of being victimized, indicating that financial consumers need to exercise special caution. Additionally, it is not easy to avoid a second fraud after being scammed once, as cases of victims suffering fraud more than twice accounted for 25% of all damages.

On the 23rd, the Korea Financial Investment Protection Foundation announced that a survey conducted from November 27 to December 13, 2019, targeting 2,530 financial consumers aged 25 to 64 to assess experiences with financial fraud and the status of prevention education, revealed that 25.6% had been exposed to financial fraud.

Among them, 13.6% (3.5% of all respondents) were actually scammed, while 86.4% avoided damage.

Compared to 2018, the percentage of respondents who suffered actual damage remained similar, but those who almost fell victim increased from 19.4% to 22.1%, indicating a higher risk of financial fraud damage.

The average actual damage per victim was 16.37 million KRW, an increase of about 4.8 million KRW compared to the previous year, showing that the economic impact of the damage has also grown.

The most frequently experienced type of damage was telephone financial fraud (voice phishing), with a response rate approaching 22.7%.

One in four respondents reported being scammed more than once. Compared to the 2018 survey, the response rates for one-time and two-time victimization decreased, while those reporting three or more times increased slightly, raising the average number of financial fraud incidents from 1.3 to 1.6.

Financial fraud is very difficult to recover from and repeated fraud is not uncommon, making prevention above all else important. However, the rate of obtaining prevention information or receiving education remained low at 22%, similar to last year.

Among them, 40.3% reported obtaining information or receiving education after experiencing financial fraud, highlighting the urgent need to expand prevention education.

The Korea Financial Investment Protection Foundation, which conducted the survey, stated, "Along with government-level provision of financial fraud prevention information and expansion of education, financial consumers themselves must exercise special caution to avoid being scammed."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.