Police arrest virtual asset scammers

[Anchor]

The police caught a fraud organization that lured investors into a virtual asset business promising guaranteed principal and profits, embezzling over 30 billion won.

There are more than 1,400 victims, with about 90% of them being over 50 years old.

Reporter Lee Won-hee has the story.

[Report]

In an office in Gangnam, Seoul.

They entice investments related to cryptocurrency by guaranteeing the principal and even offering a daily commission of 2%.

[Company Representative/Voice Altered: "You receive 60,000 won every day from Monday to Friday without doing anything."]

They promoted the exchange of a cryptocurrency called 'Tether', which is linked 1:1 with the value of the dollar, advertising its stability, alongside the well-known cryptocurrency 'Bitcoin' that older people have heard of. They claimed that they made a 3% profit on each transaction, similar to a currency exchange fee.

[Company Representative/Voice Altered: "We bring Bitcoin and a 3% profit. This person has USDT (Tether)."]

["Is it a scam? Or not? (It's not.)"]

The investigation revealed that there was no actual trading system in place.

It was a typical 'multi-level marketing' scheme promising to pay a portion of the commissions from new investors to those below them, and it was a Ponzi scheme that used new investments to pay returns to existing investors.

The company claimed it was not a scam, but what did the people who attended lectures and sent investment funds say? We heard directly from them.

From December 2023 to July last year, over 1,400 people invested about 144 billion won in this business.

Nine out of ten victims were over 50 years old.

[Victim A/Voice Altered: "We don't know. If there is such a technology really like that, wouldn't it be a huge success? I believed it too much. I couldn't even pay my credit card debt."]

[Victim B/Voice Altered: "I invested money that I needed to pay for (restaurant) ingredients and rent. I couldn't even pay for labor costs."]

The amount of money embezzled from the victims reached 32.8 billion won.

The police arrested 18 members of the fraud organization and detained two, including the main suspect, Mr. Park.

This is KBS News, Lee Won-hee.