Man in His 30s Who Sold Hacked Chinese Game Accounts and Pocketed 70 Million Won Sentenced to Prison

[Financial News] A man in his 30s has been sentenced to prison for reselling game accounts obtained through hacking in China to users in Korea, causing a massive leak of personal information.
According to the legal community on the 10th, the 1st Criminal Division of the Seoul Western District Court, presided over by Judge Park Ji-won, on January 16 sentenced a 36-year-old man identified as A to one year and six months in prison on charges of violating the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection. The court also ordered the forfeiture of 70,065,250 won in criminal proceeds.
A was put on trial for receiving account information for the online game "League of Legends," which had been obtained through hacking and other illegal means from a Chinese broker, and selling those accounts to game users in Korea. Investigators found that A had previously received a suspended prison sentence on the same charge.
According to the written judgment, starting in April 2018 A contacted a Chinese broker he had met through a Chinese account brokerage website via a social networking service (SNS) and purchased files containing game account information. He paid for the accounts through an intermediary who handled payments in Chinese yuan, and then opened an online smart store, a blog, and related websites one after another to resell the accounts.
A posted advertisements for account sales on game communities and open chat rooms. After seeing the ads, domestic buyers contacted him, and he sent them the game account IDs, passwords, nicknames, and other details via messenger. The sales proceeds were transferred to several bank accounts under A's name.
The court found that from April 2018 to August 2022, roughly four years, A sold and disclosed 21,202 hacked League of Legends game accounts to an unspecified number of people.
The bench noted, "The defendant repeatedly and continuously leaked a large number of game account IDs and passwords despite having a prior record of a fine," adding, "There is a high risk that the victims were exposed to various crimes, as they may have used the same IDs and passwords on other sites."
However, the court determined that the defendant did not conspire with the hacker to commit the offenses.
The bench also explained that the money paid to purchase the accounts constituted expenses incurred to obtain criminal proceeds, not a distribution of those proceeds, and therefore should be fully subject to forfeiture.

425_sama@fnnews.com Choi Seung-han Reporter