Picked Up a Card and Bought an Americano, Then... The Biggest Regret of His Life [True Crime Story]

[The Financial News] In the early hours of the morning, in front of a store in Seongdong District, Seoul, a credit card was lying on the roadside.
On June 7 last year, in the early morning, A found a debit card that someone had lost at that spot. Instead of returning it, he immediately inserted the card into an unmanned payment terminal inside the store and paid for a drink. By 11 a.m. the same day, A had used the card three times, spending a total of 4,200 won.
The crime then continued at a nearby convenience store. A presented the lost card as if it were his own and bought goods, making three separate payments totaling about 45,600 won during the same morning.
In this way, the total amount A spent using the lost card came to 49,800 won.
Judging by the amount alone, it might seem like a minor offense, but the court took a different view.
A had previously been sentenced by the Uijeongbu District Court to one year and six months in prison on theft and other charges, and completed his sentence in October 2024. He committed the same type of crime again roughly eight months after his release. Even before this case, A had repeatedly picked up lost cards on streets and near train stations, then gone around convenience stores and jewelry shops attempting to make purchases. Sometimes payments were blocked because the cards had been suspended, but he did not stop using the same method.
According to the legal community on the 3rd, the Single-Judge Criminal Division 10 of the Seoul Western District Court, presided over by Judge Sung Jun-gyu of the Seoul Western District Court, sentenced A to two months in prison on charges including fraud, computer-use fraud, violation of the Specialized Credit Finance Business Act, and misappropriation of lost property.
The court found A guilty of obtaining financial gain by failing to return the lost card and using it immediately. It also viewed unfavorably the fact that he had multiple prior convictions for similar offenses and reoffended during the repeat-offender period.
However, the court took into account as mitigating factors that A admitted to the offenses and that the total amount he used was not large.

425_sama@fnnews.com Reporter Choi Seung-han Reporter