South Korea busted a huge $230M crypto scam, with over 15,000 victims suffered by their scam, most of the them were old people. This scheme was apparently run by a Youtuber with over 620K subs. Cops arrested him including 215 helpers, and tracked over 1400 accounts and seized $1.9M in Bitcoin. The mastermind for this was caught in Australia and the hunt for fund is still on.
South Koreans have just cracked down a massive organization that had managed to defraud over 15K investors including vulnerable older citizens , out of 325 billion won. According to a report by Gyeonggi Southern Provincial Police Agency’s Anti-Corruption and Economic Crime Investigation Unit, they have arrested 215 people associated with the scam. Among them 12 were considered higher level organizers of the plan. Every one of the suspects now face charges under South Korea’s Aggravated Punishment Act for Specific Economic Crimes.
The scam was mostly successful because of the influence of a youtuber who goes by the name “Mr. A”, he is the alleged ring-leader of this scam. He used his influence to lure in investors with claims of quick riches, encouraging some to even sell their homes and take out loans to buy crypto assets that would supposedly yield “20 times the principal.”
The scam was active from December 2021 to March 2023, and offered 28 different types of cryptocurrency tokens, six of which were self-created and listed on overseas exchanges to attract buyers. The scam was cruel on so many levels, victim’s personal info were also misused, many of them lost their life’s savings in this scheme. The alleged leader Mr.A ran away from South Korea and was eventually arrested in Australia.
Police reported that they found across 1444 bank accounts and seized 22 bitcoins which is worth $1.9 million, and requested court approval to confiscate approximately $34 million linked to the scam. They are now working on to get victims money returned to them and prevent further financial crimes.