Civil servant claiming 6.8 billion won in assets turns out to be a fabricated 'success story'

[Financial News] A supposed "6.8 billion won civil servant investor" whose success story recently went viral on social media (SNS) and online communities has been exposed as a carefully fabricated lie. The individual, identified only as A, introduced himself as a civil servant and claimed he had grown an initial 400 million won in capital to about 6.8 billion won through stock investments, presenting a screenshot of an account showing the returns as proof.
According to trends across various online communities on the 12th, A leveraged his allegedly overwhelming investment performance to give advice to people seeking tips, saying things like "It's a matter of temperament" and "Guard against psychological wavering." With these comments, which struck a tone of feigned modesty, he quickly became a hot topic.
The post drew explosive attention on major platforms such as Blind, but once experts began to raise doubts, the supposed rags-to-riches tale was swiftly unmasked as fiction.
A user identified as a practicing tax accountant pointed out, one by one, contradictions in the tax rules and profit structure underlying A's claims. Confronted with these detailed questions, the once-confident A deleted all of his posts without offering any real explanation and disappeared. Later, netizens closely compared the images and discovered a crucial sign of manipulation: the pixel pattern in the numerical sections did not match the surrounding areas.
In particular, when people checked the actual price movements of stocks A claimed to have bought, such as Nvidia and Palantir, they concluded that earning more than 17 times the initial investment in less than two years was mathematically impossible. Some users also ran the screenshots through artificial intelligence (AI) analysis tools, which indicated that the "proof" images were highly likely to have been doctored.
Experts note that fake account apps and sophisticated editing tools are increasingly being used to fabricate screenshots of investment returns. They warn that such manipulation can create a sense of deprivation in others and lead to misguided investment decisions, and stress that displays of wealth online should be treated with great caution.


hsg@fnnews.com Han Seung-gon Reporter