A woman in her 20s who approached men she met through matchmaking agencies and other channels, fed them sleeping pills, and extorted tens of millions of won has been handed over to prosecutors.
On the 30th, Uijeongbu Police Station in Gyeonggi Province arrested and referred a woman in her 20s, identified as A, on charges of robbery causing injury and violating the Narcotics Control Act. Police said A fed sleeping pills to four men in the Seoul metropolitan area from December last year to April this year, put them to sleep, and took valuables worth about 48.9 million won.
The investigation found that A approached victims she got to know through a matchmaking agency, a blind dating application (app), or introductions from acquaintances, moved in with them and built relationships, then gave them drinks or food laced with sleeping pills.
Living with the victims and learning their account PINs and other information, A used the sleeping victims' fingerprints to unlock their phones. She then allegedly used their phones and other devices to transfer money to her own account or purchase goods worth hundreds of thousands of won, thereby extorting property.
A's crimes came to light on the 23rd when a man in his 30s, identified as B, who woke up in a dwellings in Uijeongbu, called police. Responding to B's report, police identified similar complaints connected to A in Seoul's Yangcheon, Jungnang, and Yongsan districts, among others, and urgently arrested A.
A test of B's urine by police detected components of sleeping pills, and the victims reportedly did not clearly remember how they came to ingest the pills. During police questioning, A initially denied the charges, saying the "victims took the sleeping pills on their own," but eventually admitted, saying "I committed the crimes because I needed living expenses."
Police are investigating additional victims and whether there were accomplices through digital forensics of A's phone and other devices.
Meanwhile, this case is being cited as similar to that of Kim So-young, 20, the so-called "Gangbuk motel serial killer," who was arrested and indicted on charges of serially killing two men with so-called "drugged drinks." The sleeping pill components A fed to the victims were found to be in the same class as the substances used in the Kim So-young case; however, based on circumstances such as A having met the victims before Kim's methods became widely known, police said the possibility of copycat crimes appears low.