'This Person Is a Sex Trade Troublemaker'... Gang Making Hundreds of Millions in Profit Sentenced to Prison

Over 260,000 Cases of Sex Buyer Information Secured and Shared with Business Owners Along with Police Officers' Identities Involved in Crackdowns

Photo by Asia Economy DB

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Eun-young] A group that created a so-called 'troublesome' male customer sharing application, which shared information received from prostitution business owners and earned billions of won in profits, has been sentenced to imprisonment. It was revealed that the application even included information about undercover police officers.

According to the legal community on the 2nd, three individuals including Mr. A (38, male) and Mr. B (37, male) sent text messages to the mobile phones of business owners they met through prostitution establishment promotion sites in 2017, stating that they would provide a "customer information exchange and sharing app for managing troublesome customers."

Through inquiries from business owners about installing the app, Mr. A and his group collected information on male clients who purchase sex and received a total of 260 million won by 2018 from about 800 business-related persons nationwide as management fees for affiliated establishments.

They secured approximately 260,000 pieces of data including phone numbers, tendencies, and preferences of prostitution establishment users and shared them with the business owners.

It was revealed that the information they shared even included details about some undercover police officers involved in prostitution crackdowns.

Mr. A and his group, who were indicted for violating the Personal Information Protection Act and the Electronic Financial Transactions Act, claimed during the trial that "they only entrusted the sharing of personal information to app users and did not acquire the information illegally," but the court did not accept this defense.

Judge Han Dae-gyun of the Cheonan Branch of Daejeon District Court, who presided over the first trial, stated, "The data subjects (male clients or police officers) cannot be considered to have authorized prostitution business owners to process their personal information," and added, "Considering social norms, the personal information was obtained through improper means, so the nature of the crime is not light."

Accordingly, the ringleader Mr. A was sentenced to 1 year and 6 months in prison and ordered to pay a fine of approximately 220 million won.

Mr. B, who was in charge of app promotion and business management, received a 6-month prison sentence with a 2-year probation and a fine of 20 million won.

They appealed, claiming the sentences were too harsh, but the appellate court also found no issues with the original sentencing.

The Criminal Appeals Division 3 of Daejeon District Court (Chief Judge Kim Seong-jun) emphasized again, "When a person using a phone number stored on the app server calls a prostitution establishment, the business owner's mobile phone screen displays nicknames such as 'troublesome customer' or 'police.' The motivation and purpose of collecting personal information for managing prostitution clients or evading police crackdowns are against social order."

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