'Famous Investment Expert Impersonation' Scam Amounts to 9 Billion Won... Money Laundering Gang Arrested

Crime Organization Presumed 'Vietnam Base'
Total Money Laundering Amount Identified: 42 Billion KRW
Overseas Accomplice Cooperation with Interpol

A gang that deceived people by impersonating famous investment experts and promising huge profits, embezzling about 9 billion KRW, and laundering the funds has been arrested by the police.

Seized cash and Lamborghini vehicle.
[Photo by Seongdong Police Station]

On the 18th, the Seongdong Police Station in Seoul announced that they arrested eight suspects, including a man in his 20s identified as A, on charges of fraud under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes (Special Economic Crimes Act), and six of them have been detained. So far, 86 victims have been confirmed, with damages amounting to approximately 9 billion KRW. They have recovered criminal proceeds worth 2.83968 billion KRW, including cash, four vehicles such as Lamborghinis, and luxury watches.

The suspects impersonated investment experts in open chat rooms on social networking services (SNS) and built trust with victims through YouTube stock broadcasts, then deceived them by saying, “We provide domestic stock trends and you can expect at least a 50% return on investment,” “If you deposit money into the Donghaeng Trust Project, stocks will be purchased at a low price and allocated to investors’ stock application (app) accounts, allowing stable returns of 300-600%,” and “Investing in the Hancash coin trading site will yield large profits.”

The suspects, acquaintances from Donghaeng, set up an office in the Gangnam-gu area of Seoul from October last year to February this year and prepared money laundering by establishing a fake corporate gift certificate trading company (account opening). The victim’s money deposited into the corporate account was cashed out at a gift certificate company and laundered before being handed over. To evade investigation, they colluded with the gift certificate company to create false purchase and sale receipts for gift certificates and pretended to operate a legitimate business by filming CCTV footage when visiting the gift certificate company.

Overview of Gift Certificate Laundering Organization.
[Photo by Seongdong Police Station]

The criminal organization is presumed to be based in Vietnam. They committed various new malicious fraud crimes, including stock and virtual asset investment leading room scams, side job part-time job scams, gold and oil investment fraud, artificial intelligence (AI)-based investment fraud, and romance scams through chat apps. By tracking the corporate accounts (four in total) used in the crimes, they identified 42 billion KRW laundered, and accomplices residing overseas are expected to be tracked and arrested through Interpol cooperation.

A Seongdong Police Station official said, “Recently, there has been an increase in various new types of fraud crimes such as investment leading room scams, virtual asset-related fraud, and romance scams,” and urged, “Be especially cautious if someone approaches you on SNS claiming to be a famous investor to induce investment or says you can easily make money through work-from-home part-time jobs, as these may be scams.”

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