70% of Voice Phishing Suspects Are Under 30... High-Paying Part-Time Jobs Still Prevalent

Police Agency, Voice Phishing Suspect Statistics for Q1 This Year
High-Paying Part-Time Job Ads Prevalent... "Exploiting Job-Seeking Desires"

In the first quarter of this year, it was found that 70% of suspects involved in voice phishing were aged 30 or younger. It is analyzed that many cases involve exploiting young people's desire to find jobs by posting job advertisements on easily accessible websites.

According to statistics from the National Police Agency on the 25th, among the 3,862 voice phishing suspects arrested in the first quarter of this year, 2,677 (69.3%) were aged 30 or younger. By age group, those aged 20 or younger were the most numerous at 1,782, followed by those in their 30s with 895, 40s with 585, 50s with 369, 60s with 194, and 70 or older with 37, showing that the number of suspects decreased with increasing age.

Most suspects in their 20s and 30s involved in voice phishing crimes are analyzed to become subordinate members of voice phishing organizations through job advertisements. According to the 2020 paper titled "A Study on the Participation Path of Voice Phishing Delivery Agents" (by Hong Dong-gyu, Hong Soon-min, Kim Han-gyeol), the participation path of delivery agents, who are part of the subordinate organization, was most commonly through job search websites at 70.6%, followed by introductions from acquaintances at 15.3%. Delivery agents are responsible for having victims withdraw money, then meeting them in person to receive the money and deposit it into accounts designated by higher-ups or pass it on to other accomplices.

In fact, most of the arrested suspects were subordinate members or account holders. Among those arrested, 54.87% (2,119 people) were subordinate members, and account holders numbered 914, accounting for 23.67%. Subordinate members include cash withdrawal agents who directly withdraw cash from financial institutions, face-to-face extortion agents who meet victims to seize cash, and theft agents who steal money withdrawn by victims. The number of arrests of higher-level organizers such as general managers, managers, and call center counselors was only 2.82% (109 people).

In the 'Gangnam Academy District Drug Drink Incident,' four suspects who distributed drinks testified that they joined the crime through job advertisements posted on job search sites and university communities. Some of them reportedly responded to recruitment posts advertising "high-paying part-time jobs paying 150,000 to 180,000 won per day."

Such job advertisements are still easily found on the internet. On a bulletin board of a Daum internet cafe, only posts recruiting for "high-paying part-time jobs" were posted. In a post titled "People who want to earn 2,000 through 통협 (account threat)," the poster left their Telegram contact information, saying, "People who want to earn 2,000 in 2-3 days through 통협, contact me. It's not a crime that leads to imprisonment, so come on." '통협' is slang for a new phishing method where voice phishing gangs receive money, deposit it into a specific account, then falsely report that they were victims of voice phishing to freeze the account, and demand payment to lift the freeze. On the site, there are also job postings such as "Looking for ㄷㅋ (rear-end collision insurance fraud)" and "Selling ㅌㅈ (accounts)."

On Naver Knowledge iN, a post appeared saying, "I saw a data labeling remote work job posting on a part-time job recruitment site and got involved in managing voice phishing relay devices," asking for advice on whether there is a possibility of serving a prison sentence. Relay devices manipulate international phone numbers to mobile phone numbers.

Experts point out that voice phishing and criminal organizations exploit young people's desire to find jobs to induce their participation in crimes. Professor Lee Woong-hyuk of Konkuk University's Department of Police Science said, "Young people have a strong desire to find jobs, and by using this to offer job proposals, young people inevitably fall for it," diagnosing that "since the pay is quite high and the job postings do not contain criminal elements, young people are easily drawn into crime."

Since many fall into this without awareness of participating in a crime, there are calls for education at the social level. Professor Lee Geon-su of Baekseok University's Department of Police Science said, "Working as a member of a voice phishing criminal organization is equivalent to participating in a crime, and it is necessary to educate that someone could be harmed because of me." He added, "Job posting sites must clearly take responsibility for illegal job postings," and argued, "While it may be difficult to hold search engines like Naver and Daum responsible, punishment for the creators of internet cafes should be considered."

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