Korea Arrests 26,782 in Six-Month Crackdown on Financial, Online Fraud

Police have broken up a series of fraud rings that promised high returns on cryptocurrency investments and took tens of billions of won from victims. With schemes ranging from scams on secondhand trading platforms to organized crime run from overseas bases, police arrested about 26,000 suspects over six months.

The National Office of Investigation at the Korean National Police Agency said on the 21st that it arrested a total of 26,782 people and detained 809 of them in a concentrated crackdown on financial crimes and cyber fraud that ran from March 23 to Aug. 31 this year.

By category, direct-transaction scams were the most common, with 30,757 cases involving 7,436 people. They were followed by gaming scams with 4,468 cases and 1,691 people, online shopping scams with 4,365 cases and 780 people, illegal private lending with 1,359 cases and 1,730 people, and unauthorized deposit-taking and multilevel marketing schemes with 363 cases and 694 people.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's cyber investigation unit detained two people who set up a fake cryptocurrency deposit site and took 27.3 billion won ($19.6 million) by promising monthly interest of 1.5% to 1.8% on Ripple (XRP) coins deposited with them. The Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency arrested 26 people and detained nine of them for operating from a base in Cambodia, posing as a volunteer organization and taking 40.9 billion won in cryptocurrency investments from 456 victims.

Police also uncovered so-called "self-rescue loan" crimes, in which victims are lured with the promise of small loans, persuaded to open mobile phone accounts and then have the handsets taken from them. The metropolitan crime investigation unit of the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency arrested 136 people, including a ring that took 236 mobile phones worth 450 million won by getting loan applicants to open phone accounts, and detained one of them.

In March this year, police added 78 dedicated tracking officers and now run "malicious fraud tracking teams" with 1,006 personnel across 261 police offices nationwide.

Fraud cases reported from January to August this year totaled 291,746, down from 317,131 in the same period a year earlier. The arrest rate over the same period rose 2.3 percentage points to 58.6% from 56.3%.

"We will use the malicious fraud tracking teams to pursue suspects who have not yet been arrested until the end," said Hong Seok-ki, head of the National Office of Investigation at the Korean National Police Agency.