"Yeom Seunghwan Here. Growing Your Investment to 500 Million Won" Targeting Retail Investors with Shaken Minds from Blue-Tinged Accounts

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Seon-ae] "This is Yeom Seunghwan from Sampro TV. This information is not for just anyone. This is the very last theme stock related to the presidential election. It will surge more than 10 times. If you incur losses, we will compensate you with 100 million KRW. After the presidential election, we will grow your account balance to over 500 million KRW."

There is a rampant scam activity where fraudsters impersonate famous analysts and major securities firms to swindle investment funds from individual investors. This targets novice investors (called "Jurin-i," a combination of "stock" and "child") who have jumped into the stock market boom since COVID-19 and are actively seeking investment information. Moreover, as losses have snowballed due to market sluggishness this year, these scammers are aggressively deceiving individual investors who cannot handle the situation due to their short stock investment experience.

On the 1st, messages containing the phrase "This is Yeom Seunghwan" were sent to individual investors. Researcher Yeom, nicknamed "Yeom-bly," is a director at Ebest Investment & Securities. He frequently appears on the popular economic YouTube channel "Sampro TV," which has 1.9 million subscribers, and is well-liked by individual investors. The messages impersonating Yeom Seunghwan disclose his affiliation with Ebest Investment & Securities and Sampro TV, and include suspicious URLs at the bottom. The problem lies with individual investors who receive these messages and click on the URLs. On the 2nd, similar messages impersonating Yeom Seunghwan were again distributed. Considering the messages stated recruitment of 500 to 600 people, it is estimated that spam messages were sent to hundreds of individuals.

Kim, a 20-year-old university student with only two months of stock investment experience who entered the stock market this year, said, "I often watch Sampro TV and usually listen well to investment advice from Yeom-bly, who is famous among individual investors, so I unknowingly clicked the URL and entered a stock leading chat room." He added, "Fortunately, I realized it quickly and left immediately, but there were already over 1,000 participants."

There are also many messages impersonating Moon Namjoong, a famous analyst at Daishin Securities. Moon is in charge of global strategy at Daishin Securities Research Center and frequently appears on various YouTube channels, making him well-known among individual investors. Impersonation of securities firms is also rampant. Scammers slightly alter the names to deceive individual investors. For example, Kiwoom Securities is impersonated as "Kiwoom Investment Securities," and Shinhan Financial Investment as "Shinhan Investment Dotcom."

The problem is that there are no clear countermeasures. Daishin Securities and Shinhan Financial Investment have posted notices on their websites stating these are "fraudulent activities" and urge "special caution."

An industry insider said, "Although brand image damage and other harms are occurring due to repeated impersonations, cautionary warnings are the only practical response." Leading chat room scams involving name and photo theft require the analyst themselves to report each case individually via KakaoTalk or other means to block the chat rooms. Even if reported and collectively shut down, they are often impersonated again. In reality, complete prevention is impossible.

Although financial authorities announced in May last year that they would strengthen management and supervision of quasi-investment advisory firms operating leading chat rooms, it is practically difficult because they must directly verify whether one-on-one consultations occur in the chat rooms. Furthermore, the budget allocated for cracking down on illegal operations is only 20 million KRW. To confirm illegal activities, one must join the chat rooms pretending to be a customer, but considering the average contract amount for chat rooms is several million KRW, this budget only covers the fees for a few chat rooms. Ultimately, there are calls to gradually abolish the "quasi-investment advisory business" itself, which can cause misunderstandings as if it were a legitimate investment advisory company.

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