Internet Art Auction Site... Turns Out to Be Illegal Gambling Money Laundering

Gangster-Run Overseas Gambling Crime Syndicate Members Arrested

The Anti-Corruption and Economic Crime Investigation Unit 2 of the Jeonnam Provincial Police Agency announced on the 21st that they identified 29 members of an organized crime group, including A, who operated an online gambling site, arrested 3 of them, and apprehended 20 others who worked as distributors at the site.

They issued red notices and took other measures against the remaining 6 accomplices who are presumed to still be operating without entering the country.

They are suspected of renting an entire floor of an apartment and multiple locations including hotels in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, since around August to operate online gambling sites such as baccarat.

They disguised approximately 113.6 billion KRW of gambling funds as payments for purchasing artworks on an art auction site and for buying goods via courier services.

It was confirmed that they used about 4,000 virtual accounts to receive payments and 1,055 separate dummy accounts to launder the deposited money.

They set up an office in Cambodia and recruited people to work for the organization through SNS advertisements. Upon arrival in Cambodia, all recruits were required to use aliases only, surrender their passports and mobile phones, use burner phones, and installed internet computers in various locations in the Gwangju area to launder gambling funds through internet banking.

It was also confirmed that A and B threatened accomplice C, who confessed to the police, by paying for his lawyer fees and warning him that if he recanted his false testimony, he would be made a scapegoat within the organization.

The organization to which the suspects belonged systematically responded to police investigations by hiring about 10 lawyers solely for this case without the knowledge of the arrested distributor suspects.

So far, about 10,000 gamblers have been identified from the gambling accounts, most of whom are young people in their 20s and 30s.

The police are currently reviewing whether to indict habitual gamblers among them and considering the confiscation and recovery of funds used for gambling.

A representative of the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crime Investigation Unit 2 of the Jeonnam Provincial Police Agency stated, “Since the crime scenes are overseas and all accomplices used aliases and burner phones, it was very difficult to identify them and trace over 1,000 laundering accounts to establish connections to the crimes. We are persuading suspects who have not yet entered the country to surrender actively through the arrested accomplices, and we plan to apprehend them soon in cooperation with the local Korean desk.”

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