"Exchange Gift Certificates for Cash"... Gangster Group Arrested for Weapon Rampage

A gang that threatened employees with weapons, revealing tattoos at a gift certificate exchange, and extorted tens of millions of won has been arrested by the police.

The Songpa Police Station in Seoul announced on the 1st that six people, including Kim, a man in his 20s with a background in organized crime, have been booked and are under investigation for charges including joint extortion and obstruction of business. Among them, the ringleader Kim is being investigated while in custody.

The gang is accused of, on the morning of the 2nd of last month at 9:00 AM, while looking for a way to convert gift certificates worth 2 billion won into cash, threatening employees with a weapon at a gift certificate store inside a subway station shopping area in Songpa-gu, demanding to exchange 100 million won worth of gift certificates for cash, and embezzling about 80 million won.

It was revealed that they closed the store for about three hours, hurled insults at the employees, took off their shirts to show tattoos, and threatened them.

They are also accused of paralyzing business by shouting to passersby that "they are committing fraud."

The employees, unable to withstand the threats, transferred about 90 million won, but the gift certificates handed over by the gang were not worth 100 million won but only consisted of dozens of 50,000-won bills.

A police official said, "We plan to further investigate how the gang came to possess such a large amount of gift certificates."

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