◀ Anchor ▶
A gang who defrauded victims of billions of won by telling them to “invest in renting a Bitcoin mining machine” was caught by the police.
They were caught making a phone call recommending investment without knowing that they were police officers.
This is reporter Geon-hee Cho.
◀ Report ▶
When the police officer opens the door, he sees an office filled with desks.
[경찰]
“Raise your hand if you don’t participate in fraud. There is none. It’s true that they are all committing fraud. As of now, everyone is being arrested urgently.”
A total of 16 people were caught as part of the ‘investment fraud gang’.
They have been recommending investment for about 7 months since October of last year, saying, “If you rent a Bitcoin mining machine, you will receive high profits.”
To avoid suspicion, he sent me 1% of the investment amount every day for the first two months as profits, and even gave me a fake business card and contract.
[피해자 (음성변조)]
“‘There’s a mining company in the U.S. They’re coming to Korea soon and they’re going to give us some kind of benefit.’ But it was an impersonation of a company that was already listed in the United States.”
Then, when the victim sent a large amount of money, he disappeared.
According to the police investigation, there were 50 victims and the damage amounted to approximately 2.3 billion won.
The gang that had been avoiding tracking by moving from office to office three times was caught because of a single phone call.
Last April, I made a scam call as usual, but the person who answered was a police officer.
[투자사기 조직원 (음성변조) – 경찰관]
“I’ll think about it for a bit and call you again tomorrow. I also need some time. If I talk about this, my wife gets angry again. She knows it all.”
[담당 수사관]
“As if I had been deceived because I had a hunch that it was a scam, I kept talking on the phone as if I was going to make an investment, securing clues one by one…”
Afterwards, the police arrested 31 additional members of the organization who opened 2,000 Daepo SIM cards with copies of foreign passports and handed them over to a fraud group, and 33 additional people, including a call center operator who illegally collected personal information by pretending to be a financial institution and sold it for 10,000 won per case.
The police said that 13 of the 80 people were detained and the rest were handed over to the prosecution without detention. They plan to continue the investigation as they believe there are more accomplices.
This is Geonhee Jo from MBC News.
Video coverage: Kang Jong-soo, Woo Seong-hoon / Video editing: Kim Ji-yoon
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