Police Arrest Over 12,000 Cyber Crimes Affecting Public Livelihood and Economy in Four Months

Midterm Results of Intensive Crackdown on Cyber Fraud and Financial Crimes

[Asia Economy Reporter Seongpil Cho] The National Police Agency's National Investigation Headquarters conducted an intensive crackdown on cyber fraud and cyber financial crimes, arresting 12,070 suspects and detaining 70 over a four-month period.

On the 19th, the police announced the interim results of the intensive crackdown on cyber fraud and cyber financial crimes carried out since March. Specifically, 10,050 suspects were arrested for cyber fraud (563 detained), and 2,020 for cyber financial crimes (144 detained). This represents a 14.5% increase compared to 10,536 suspects during the same period last year (March to June). The police explained, "As a result of focusing on the increasingly serious issue of messenger phishing, the number of arrests and detentions related to cyber financial crimes has significantly increased."

By crime type, cyber fraud arrests were made in the order of direct transaction fraud → game fraud → shopping mall fraud. Cyber financial crimes were in the order of messenger phishing → parsing/pharming → body cam phishing. New types of fraud such as virtual asset embezzlement and investment fraud using fake websites were included as key targets for this year's crackdown. The police also concentrated investigative efforts on messenger phishing and body cam phishing, resulting in the arrest of many related suspects.

By age group of suspects, the majority were young people. In cyber fraud cases, 65.9% of suspects were in their teens to 30s. Similarly, in cyber financial crimes, suspects in their 20s were the largest group, but those in their 40s and 50s accounted for 9% and 7% respectively, showing a relatively even age distribution.

Earlier, to respond to new types of cyber crimes affecting the livelihood economy, the police established Cyber Economic Crime Investigation Teams in provincial police agencies nationwide last year. Through this, they have been conducting activities such as ▲ rapid case consolidation at the initial stage via the Cyber Crime Report Management system (ECRM) ▲ strengthening responsible investigations by transferring multi-victim fraud and cyber financial crime cases to provincial police agencies ▲ and conducting organization-centered investigations targeting ringleaders.

This special crackdown will continue until October 31. During the remaining period, the police plan to strengthen the existing crackdown system and actively crack down on various frauds related to performances and sports tickets, which have been increasing following the easing of COVID-19 social distancing measures. A National Police Agency official stated, "We will strictly punish cyber fraud and cyber financial crimes, which are representative crimes that hurt ordinary citizens and small business owners."

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