Woman in Her 50s Sentenced to Prison for Defrauding Colleagues of Tens of Millions of Won by Falsely Claiming She Needed Emergency Funds

[Financial News] A woman in her 50s who deceived her coworkers by claiming she urgently needed money and obtained tens of millions of won has been sentenced to prison.
According to the legal community on the 2nd, the Seoul Southern District Court’s Criminal Division 13 (Judge Kim Sung-eun) sentenced Ms. A, a woman in her 50s indicted on fraud charges, to one year in prison.
Ms. A, who worked as the head nurse at a hospital in Gyeonggi Province, was brought to trial on charges of deceiving her colleagues and receiving money from them.
In October 2022, she lied to Mr. B, an administrative team employee at the same hospital, saying, "I urgently need money. If you lend it to me, I can pay you back even late at night," and received a total of 25.7 million won via bank transfer.
She reportedly used the same method to deceive other colleagues in November of that year. Ms. A told Dr. C, a physician at the hospital, "I urgently need money. I will repay you as soon as my husband deposits the funds," and obtained 30 million won. About two weeks later, she called Ms. D, a radiology department employee, and, claiming she needed money urgently, had 6 million won transferred to her own account.
At the time, Ms. A had suffered losses of over 100 million won due to a virtual currency investment scam. It was found that she intended to use the borrowed money to pay virtual currency investment fees and had neither the intention nor the ability to repay her debts.
In response, Ms. A's legal team argued that she had both the intention and the ability to repay at the time of the offenses, and thus lacked fraudulent intent.
However, the court rejected this claim, citing several factors: Ms. A had already suffered losses from a virtual currency scam and should have foreseen that she would not be able to repay the money; she had significant debts even before borrowing the funds; and after receiving her severance pay, she spent it all on fees for withdrawing virtual currency profits.
The court stated, "The victims lent money to the defendant, their coworker, without any IOU, trusting her. Nevertheless, the defendant betrayed their trust, cut off contact, and even asked them to keep quiet about the loans, leading to additional victims. The nature of the crime is serious. It is doubtful whether the defendant is truly remorseful, and considering that she has not been forgiven by the victims or repaid most of the stolen funds, a prison sentence is unavoidable."

welcome@fnnews.com Jang Yu-ha Reporter