Cheil Worldwide said on the 17th it will roll out a nationwide tip-off campaign, "Voice Wanted," with the Korean National Police Agency and the Integrated Response Unit for Telecommunication and Financial Fraud, to raise awareness of voice phishing crimes and make a practical contribution to crime prevention.
The Korean National Police Agency and Cheil Worldwide noted that although the methods of non-face-to-face voice phishing are evolving by the day, the voiceprint of phishing suspects—their vocal "fingerprint"—cannot be changed and becomes key investigative evidence. Based on that, they planned this campaign to collect the latest voice phishing audio data for use in crime prevention and investigations.
They created an unusual wanted poster by drawing a "virtual composite sketch" with waveform graphs extracted from the actual voiceprints of phishing suspects, including those posing as investigators, massage parlor operators, a two-person prosecutor team, and those using pretexts such as loans, card delivery, and kidnappings.
The poster's core function is to inform people about voice phishing methods and encourage tips. By scanning the QR code on the wanted poster, people can watch videos of actual voice phishing cases and submit recorded voice phishing calls. When a voice phishing call comes in, turn on the smartphone call recording function, keep the conversation short with brief answers, hang up, and submit the call recording file via the poster's QR code.
The posters will be put up at police stations, banks, telecom companies, and government offices nationwide. Voiceprints of suspects secured through tips will be provided to the Police University's Police Science Institute and used to strengthen voice analysis models, identify suspects, check organizational networks, and track additional crimes. They also hope to later share data with telecom companies so that in-app warnings and alerts can serve as preventive measures to block voice phishing damage in advance.
Meanwhile, the amount of damage from voice phishing, which threatens people's property and safety, surged 91% from 447.2 billion won in 2023 to 854.5 billion won in 2024. This year, the damage exceeded 1 trillion won in 10 months. In response, in Sep., the government officially launched the pan-government joint body, the Integrated Response Unit for Telecommunication and Financial Fraud, with relevant agencies including the Korean National Police Agency, the Ministry of Science and ICT, and the Financial Services Commission (FSC), and is operating a comprehensive response system to eradicate voice phishing.