Demanding nude photos and threats of distribution for late payments... Busan Police Agency arrests 66 suspects in illegal loan business

Items seized by the police from the suspects. [Image source=Busan Police Agency]

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Hwang Du-yeol] A gang that threatened borrowers who were late on payments and even demanded nude photos has been arrested.

The police conducted a focused crackdown on illegal lending businesses, arresting 66 suspects involved in unregistered lending and illegal debt collection operations, of whom 11 were detained.

On the 8th, the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency announced that they carried out the focused crackdown anticipating an increase in illegal lending due to COVID-19 and the economic downturn, aiming to eradicate it.

As a result of the crackdown, a large number of suspects engaged in illegal lending by providing non-face-to-face small loans to credit delinquents and low-income groups, charging annual interest rates ranging from 4,000% to 12,166% after one week.

The suspects lent approximately 6.6 billion KRW to about 3,000 victims over 12,000 transactions and collected high interest amounting to about 2.5 billion KRW.

To evade investigation, they used burner phones registered under other people's names and operated in a cell-like structure, repaying loan amounts through smart withdrawals or victim accounts.

According to the police, gang member A formed a lending organization with seniors and juniors from the same neighborhood, lending money to victims and charging annual interest rates exceeding 4,000%.

A advertised loans online and used abusive language and threats to collect debts from defaulters, even demanding nude photos and threatening to distribute them as a form of illegal debt collection.

Additionally, for debtors in urgent need of money, they lent money using vehicles as collateral and, when repayment failed, sold the debtor's vehicles without the victims' consent.

The suspects arrested this time created SNS group chats to share information on debtors' defaults obtained during lending operations and used it for their lending business.

They also developed a smartphone app that allowed searching debtors' credit information using the default credit data of 11,456 people they had stored, distributed it to about 240 lenders, and charged monthly usage fees.

The police confiscated and froze criminal proceeds worth about 200 million KRW before prosecution and requested the local district office to cancel the registration of the companies involved.

The illegal credit information inquiry app created by the suspects was also referred to the Korea Communications Standards Commission for review and was blocked.

A police official said, “If you are facing financial difficulties, we recommend loan products supported by the Korea Inclusive Finance Agency or consultations related to the debtor representative system of the Korea Legal Aid Corporation,” and urged, “If you have been victimized, please actively report to investigative agencies.”

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