"Buying Bank Accounts" Illegal Financial Ads Exploiting Ordinary People Reach 2.69 Million... Only 4.9% Addressed

[Asia Economy Reporter Bu Aeri] It has been revealed that illegal financial advertisements have approached 2.69 million cases over the past five years.

According to the 'Status of Detection, Collection, and Measures on Illegal Financial Advertisements' submitted by the Financial Supervisory Service to Park Jae-ho, a member of the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee from the Democratic Party of Korea, on the 21st, illegal financial advertisements were 269,918 cases in 2018, 271,517 cases in 2019, remaining in the 200,000 range, but surged to 794,744 cases in 2020 and 1,025,965 cases in 2021. As of July this year, 3,237,624 cases have been collected.

Among these, illegal loan advertisements accounted for 66% of the total, while so-called illegal cash conversion schemes such as small mobile payment cashing and credit card cashing each accounted for 11.5%. Personal credit information trading accounted for 5.5%, bank account trading 3%, and loan manipulation 2%, respectively.

In 2020 and last year, when there were many investors in urgent need of funds due to the coin investment craze following COVID-19, unregistered loan business advertisements offering easy loans at high interest rates were rampant.

In the case of bank account trading advertisements, caution is necessary as they can be exploited for financial crimes. Even if one unknowingly buys or rents a bank account, they may become victims because such acts violate the Electronic Financial Transactions Act and are punishable crimes.

The Financial Supervisory Service has been operating a big data-based illegal financial advertisement monitoring system since September 2020. However, although post-measures such as suspending the use of phone numbers and deleting internet posts are taken for collected illegal financial advertisements, these measures account for only 4.9% of the total cases.

Assemblyman Park said, "The types of illegal financial advertisements are becoming more diverse, and the forms of advertisements are becoming more sophisticated," and added, "A government-wide countermeasure is necessary so that ordinary citizens, whose financial situations are difficult due to the economy, are not deceived by illegal financial advertisements."

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