Gyeonggi-do Reviews Criminal Charges Against 17 Used Car Dealers for False Listings

Gyeonggi Provincial Government Gwanggyo New Office Building

[Asia Economy (Suwon) = Reporter Lee Young-gyu] Gyeonggi Province announced on the 2nd that it is reviewing criminal charges against 17 out of 24 online used car sales sites suspected of posting false listings.

From March to December last year, the province conducted a comparison of automotive electronic data in collaboration with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, targeting 24 online used car sales sites, including basic data (DB) from a big data specialized agency and newly created sites.

In particular, through a "mystery shopping" investigation technique where investigators posed as customers, the province verified whether the advertisement content and information matched the listings, identifying 17 sites suspected of false listings.

Analysis of 570 listings from these 17 sites revealed on average ▲ sales at 36.3% of the normal market price ▲ 5.4% of vehicles registered as commercial products ▲ 24% of deregistered vehicles ▲ 64.9% accuracy in model year matching ▲ and advertisements reducing the actual mileage by 41,995 km.

After legal review, the province decided to take follow-up actions such as criminal charges and investigation requests against the suspected false listing sites and related sales agents.

Heo Seong-cheol, head of the Fair Economy Division of the province, explained, "As of December 2021, there were 12 suspected false listing sites in operation, but due to monitoring activities, only one site was active as of December 2022, showing an 83% decrease compared to the previous year."

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