After four months of intensive investigations into multi-victim crimes, including illegal stock-touting chatroom fraud cases, prosecutors have sent more than 500 people to trial.
According to the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office on the 8th, the Supreme Prosecutors' Office multi-victim crime special investigation team (Head of Team Kim Yong-jae, chief of the Criminal Division 3 at the Supreme Prosecutors' Office) and the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office Criminal Division 4 (Director General Prosecutor Lee Jeong-hwa) and Criminal Division 7 (Director General Prosecutor Choi Tae-eun), among others, focused on multi-victim crime cases starting in Sep. last year and ultimately disposed of a total of 55 cases, indicting 535 people. Of these, prosecutors directly detained four.
A representative case involved an illegal pseudo-deposit-taking firm that raised 3.3 trillion won from about 200,000 investors and siphoned off 260 billion won.
According to prosecutors, in this case, illegal pseudo-deposit-taking company H, from Jul. 2020 to Dec. 2023, lured investors with a plausible website and app touting a "platform that connects producers and consumers of agricultural and livestock products" and "principal recovery within one year and lifetime revenue payments," but the investigation found it was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme (a multi-level financial fraud) that rolled funds over without any revenue structure.
Prosecutors sent 70 people to trial, including H's chair and key executives and heads of major platforms, on charges including fraud, violations of the Act on the Regulation of Conducting Fund-Raising without Permission, and violations of the Door-to-Door Sales Act, and detained two of them.
Among multi-victim crime cases, pseudo-deposit-taking and pyramid fraud cases are on the rise. According to prosecutors, the number of related cases increased about 72%, from 2,158 in 2021 to 3,727 in 2024. From Jan. to Jul. last year, 1,581 cases were tallied.
The problem is that these multi-victim crime cases often involve organized offenses carried out nationwide over an extended period, and reports of damage are frequently filed belatedly when the harm has already spread. This is because evidence collection is tricky and investigative agencies must review a vast volume of records. As a result, from 2022 to 2024, the prosecution's final disposition rate did not exceed an average of 30%. However, from Jan. to Jul. last year, it rose to an average of 31.8%.
Prosecutors said, "We will work with relevant agencies to block multi-victim crimes that inflict serious harm on ordinary people's lives at an early stage," and added, "We will respond swiftly and sternly through professional and thorough investigations."