‘OO Economic Newspaper’ Stock Surge Recommendations... Widespread Fraud Impersonating Analysts and Media Outlets

Surge in Non-Face-to-Face Investment Activation
Pretending to Be Securities Analysts and Media
High-Profit Bait Text Messages
Profit Verification Photos in Open Chat Rooms
Inducing Deposits to Accounts Under Others' Names

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Gyumin] Jeon (54), who is deeply involved in stock investment, recently received an enticing text message. It read, "This is OO Economy A. We pick only the power stocks like a fortune teller and increase them by over 150% in 9 days," offering investment advice. Amid the difficulties in business caused by COVID-19, Jeon couldn't help but pay attention to the message. He showed the text to his husband and people around him just in case, and as expected, many had received similar messages and some had been victims of 'fraud.'

As non-face-to-face sales related to investment have become active due to COVID-19, scams enticing stock and coin investments are rapidly increasing. Scammers have gone so far as to impersonate securities firm researchers and even media outlets, using high returns as bait. Although investigative agencies are actively responding, caution is necessary until related regulations are established.

It is common for scammers to impersonate researchers from well-known securities firms. Office worker Kim (26) received an investment solicitation text last month claiming to be from a securities firm researcher, along with a message impersonating a media outlet. Kim recognized the name of the researcher who appeared on a TV program and immediately realized it was a 'scam.' He said, "I think these kinds of scams through text messages or open chat rooms easily deceive elderly people."

According to data from the Financial Consumers Federation, scammers lure victims into mobile messenger open chat rooms through text messages using the bait of high returns. They then show cases of principal and profit guarantees and photos certifying profits to reassure victims, inducing deposits into accounts under other people's names or disguised site accounts. Since stock investments are made through accounts in the investor's own name, requests to transfer investment funds to accounts under other people's names are highly likely to be 'scams.' The trend of increasing 'scam' messages can also be seen in statistics from the spam blocking application 'WhoWho.' The number of spam reports to 'WhoWho' was 7,558,026 in the third quarter of last year, increasing to 7,791,736 in the fourth quarter, with stock and investment-related spam accounting for 33.2%, ranking first by far.

Prosecutors and police are also responding as such impersonations become rampant. On the 25th, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors' Office arrested and indicted a group that sold an automatic stock trading program by falsely claiming to have 'top 1% leader traders.' The Gyeonggi Northern Police Agency also arrested a group last year that impersonated investment experts in KakaoTalk open chat rooms and created a fake coin exchange, swindling 9.6 billion KRW from 158 people. Kang Hyunggu, Secretary General of the Financial Consumers Federation, said, "Those inducing investments are 'scammers,' not registered quasi-investment advisory businesses," adding, "Since financial investment scams impersonating celebrities have diversified, they should not be approached as individual fraud cases," and emphasized, "They should be regulated as 'voice phishing' crimes so that immediate account payment suspensions can be implemented."

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