Source: aminkorea/Adobe
South Korean police have arrested a suspected cryptocurrency scammer for defrauding “housewives and office workers.”
Officials in Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province arrested a 38-year-old man, broadcaster SBS reported.
He was turned over to prosecutors on fraud-related charges.
Police say the man defrauded victims of approximately $218,000.
He allegedly told them they would be “guaranteed” to make “high profits” if they invested in his project.
The man reportedly told his alleged victims that they would get their stake back, as well as their profits, by buying “cryptocurrency” from an “overseas platform.”
The man carried out the suspicious scheme from September 2019 to August 2022, officials said.
The man allegedly posed as a director of a prominent stock trading firm.
But he appears to have adopted a range of different identities to deceive more of his alleged victims.
He also sometimes pretended to be a successful cryptocurrency trader and even a qualified civil servant.
Police said the man regularly held investing and cryptocurrency-themed group chats on the KakaoTalk chat app platform in order to find “target housewives and office workers.”
The man has been investigated in the past as part of cases related to cryptocurrency fraud, the officials added.
But detectives were forced to drop their investigation when he moved the funds to an “overseas cryptocurrency exchange,” they said.
Police said they told the suspected victim he would invest in a token he knew would be listed on a major exchange.
But, they said, he instead used the alleged victim’s funds to gamble at an online cryptocurrency casino.
The Rise of South Korea’s “Cryptocurrency Scammers”?
In March, the police chief announced the creation of a new unit dedicated to fighting cryptocurrency scams.
Cryptocurrency scams are on the rise in South Korea.
Police are also battling the skyrocketing cryptocurrency drug trade.
The country’s president last month pledged to “wage an all-out war” against cryptocurrency drug dealers.
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