The Government Joint Investigation Team on Voice Phishing Crimes, set up at the Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors' Office, said on the 18th that it achieved results by conducting supplementary investigations into a voice phishing case referred by police and indicting four money-laundering operatives under arrest.
According to the joint team, police investigated the case and referred only the organization's low-level cash collectors without detention. From May to Nov., over six months, the joint team conducted supplementary investigations and indicted four people under arrest who laundered voice phishing proceeds by converting game money.
The four detained suspects sold online game money worth 51 billion won using bank accounts under borrowed names from Nov. 2022 to April this year. The joint team analyzed and traced more than 500,000 financial transactions and uncovered that voice phishing proceeds worth about 400 million won had been laundered.
The joint team also uncovered that they obtained 4.7 billion won in criminal revenue during the money-laundering process. Authorities seized 400 million won in cash they possessed and took measures to confiscate and preserve deposits and a BMW vehicle.
The joint team said, "We will protect the public safely with thorough and tenacious investigations so that criminals cannot gain any 'profits' from crime."
The government joint team on voice phishing crimes was launched in July 2022 under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration. In addition to six prosecutors and 23 police officers, the Financial Supervisory Service, the National Tax Service, the Korea Customs Service, the Korea Immigration Service, and the Korea Media and Communications Commission dispatched personnel. Within a single organization, multiple agencies can collaborate to simultaneously take measures such as tracking funds, freezing accounts, and securing immigration information.
Prosecutors have recently been publicly sharing, day after day, cases in which they clarified the substance of crimes by conducting supplementary investigations into cases probed by police. Earlier, the Seoul Western District Prosecutors' Office said the previous day (on the 17th) that it indicted, under arrest, a 41-year-old car dealer, identified only as A, on charges of swindling valuables worth about 2.7 billion won from car buyers and others. Police referred A without detention last year, but prosecutors heard statements from all victims and determined whether the charges were established.
Meanwhile, Lim Eun-jeong, chief of the Eastern District Prosecutors' Office, where the government joint team on voice phishing is installed, has argued at National Assembly forums that the Prosecutors' Office should be abolished and that the authority for supplementary investigations should also be removed. In Oct. next year, the Prosecutors' Office will be abolished and a Prosecution Service will be newly established, but whether to grant the Prosecution Service the authority for supplementary investigations has not yet been decided.