"Man in His 30s Reported 'Wiping Out 4 Billion Won in Cash' — Turns Out He Was the Mastermind Behind a 14 Billion Won Scam Ring"

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[Financial News] A man in his 30s who reported to police that 4 billion won had been stolen from the 6.8 billion won in cash he was storing at an unmanned warehouse in Songpa District, Seoul, has instead been referred to prosecutors.
Police traced the source of the massive stack of cash and found that it was criminal proceeds from a 14 billion won-scale scam in which fraudsters impersonated KONEX.
On the 27th, Seoul Songpa Police Station said it had sent the man, identified by his surname Yeo, to the Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors' Office the previous day on charges of violating the Act on the Regulation and Punishment of Concealment of Criminal Proceeds, without detention.
The case dates back to 2024. Yeo called 112 after claiming that he had hidden 6.8 billion won in cash at a rented unmanned warehouse in Songpa District, Seoul, and that about 4 billion won had been stolen by a warehouse manager in his 40s, identified by his surname Shim.
Police launched an investigation, arrested Shim, and recovered the stolen 4 billion won in cash. The warehouse employee was later sentenced to three years in prison, a ruling that was finalized by the Supreme Court of Korea.
But police did not return the recovered money to Yeo. Instead, they tightened the net around him. Investigators grew suspicious because he had stored tens of billions of won in cash in an unmanned warehouse rather than a bank, and because he gave a muddled explanation of the source of the funds, saying they were "business capital for self-employment."
Further investigation found that the cash Yeo claimed to have lost was in fact carefully concealed criminal proceeds.
The money was traced to part of the funds stolen in a 2021 scam involving a fake exchange that impersonated KONEX, the Korea New Exchange for small and medium-sized enterprises. At the time, the criminal group set up a fake website using the KONEX name and tricked victims into believing it had partnered with well-known domestic financial investment firms, defrauding about 300 people of more than 14 billion won.
Remarkably, Yeo, the man who reported the theft, was the mastermind behind the fraud ring. He was indicted while in custody, but was acquitted at trial in 2022 and released. After he secretly hid the scam proceeds in the unmanned warehouse, only to have them stolen by a warehouse employee, he called police himself in an attempt to recover the money — and ended up making a fatal mistake.
moon@fnnews.com Moon Young-jin Reporter