105 Illegal Subscription Brokers Including Fictitious Residence Cases Caught for Trading Subscription Savings Accounts

88 Cases of Fraudulent Apartment Pre-sale Rights Nationwide
Including Use of Sham Marriages and Divorces

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Gwan-ju] A group of subscription brokers who fraudulently won dozens of apartment pre-sale rights through the buying and selling of subscription savings accounts has been mass arrested by the police.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's Financial Crime Investigation Unit announced on the 28th that broker A (63) was arrested on charges of violating the Housing Act and obstruction of business, and 104 others, including B (53), who transferred subscription savings accounts, were booked without detention.

According to the police, A and others are suspected of fraudulently winning 88 apartment pre-sale rights by acquiring subscription savings accounts and financial certificates from 2017 until last year.

The subscription brokers mainly approached people in difficult financial situations, encouraging them to transfer their subscription savings accounts, paying amounts ranging from 3 million KRW to as much as 100 million KRW. They immediately resold the apartments won through this method as soon as the winning announcements were made.

In particular, to fraudulently win apartment pre-sale rights, they changed the registered addresses of the subscription account holders or used sham marriages to change spouses and win special supply allocations. They also exploited special supply allocations for multiple children by couples living at the same address after fake divorces, and used institution-recommended special supplies (for North Korean defectors) which have relatively low competition rates.

The apartments won by these brokers were distributed nationwide, with Gyeonggi Province having the highest number at 39 cases, followed by Incheon with 21, Daegu with 8, and Seoul and Sejong with 3 each. Among these, it was revealed that 32 cases involved false address registrations and 6 cases involved sham marriages.

A police official stated, "We plan to notify the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport about the apartment pre-sale rights confirmed to have been fraudulently won," and added, "We will continue to carry out related investigations to eradicate supply order disturbances."

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