"Up to $290,000 a Month" He Claimed to Be a Former Hospital Director, Then Invested My Money in Derivatives [Scammers]

[Financial News] "This business is a real jackpot. Just close your eyes and let’s do it together."
In April 2023, at a quiet cafe in Seoul Songpa District, the voice of a man in his 60s, identified as A (68), was full of certainty. With every elaborate explanation he gave, a rosy future that only a retired wealthy investor might enjoy seemed to appear before the victim like a mirage. A reassuring title as a former hospital director, and a business plan that claimed he could bring in workers from Vietnam and generate monthly profits of hundreds of millions of won. That was the moment the point of no return was created.
The trap A carefully laid for victim B was a ghostlike "foreign caregiver business" with no substance or structure. Introduced by an acquaintance, the trust he skillfully built through a few phone messages and emails swallowed up the victim’s hard-earned assets. How did the cruel relationship between the two begin? The clock turns back one year.
It was a spring day in April 2022. A approached B, who worked in the real estate industry. He portrayed himself as a perfect wealthy businessman, saying he had quit as a hospital director and was now doing hospital consulting. He kept in touch under the plausible pretext of asking B to look for good hospital or pharmacy locations, and gradually melted away B’s guard. It was a thoroughly planned buildup.
By early April 2023, A finally revealed his true colors. He said he was planning to establish a company that would bring in 200 caregivers from Vietnam on work visas and place them in domestic hospitals. He then sweetened the deal by claiming, "If we charge just 2 million won per person, that would bring in about 400 million won a month. If you invest 20 million won, I’ll give you company shares and a share of the profits."
But the cost of that flashy business plan was brutally high. The 20 million won that B handed over in hopes of the future was not an investment for tomorrow, but merely the stake in a cruel scam.

In fact, A had no experience as a hospital director at all, nor did he have the money or ability to properly carry out a caregiver business in Vietnam. The only thing on his mind was the investment money that would come out of B’s pocket.
Even more shocking was A’s betrayal. The very next day after receiving the money, he diverted the victim’s hard-earned investment funds into buying stock derivatives with an extremely high risk of principal loss. The original investment vanished without a trace in the cold fire of the capital market in just about five months.
The money was gone, but A’s scam did not stop. He kept contacting B as if preparations for the caregiver business in Vietnam were proceeding normally. He continued to deceive B with messages such as, "Vietnam's Ministry of Labor is still backing us," "We are preparing to open an office in Myeong-dong," and "There are 200 people waiting in line in Vietnam." He also shook B’s resolve with the scammer’s classic false hope, saying, "Once the visa category passes, the stock value will rise at least tenfold, maybe even dozens of times."
According to legal sources on the 12th, the Criminal Division 3, Single Judge Panel of the Seoul Northern District Court sentenced A to six months in prison on June 26 for fraud. He was brought to trial on charges of deceiving victim B and taking 20 million won on April 3, 2023, under the pretext of an investment.
During the trial, A claimed, "I never introduced myself as a hospital director, and in fact the victim suggested the investment first." The court did not accept that brazen argument. The victim’s testimony was consistent, and there was plenty of hard evidence, including text messages, that backed it up.
It also emerged that A already had a criminal record. He was found to have prior convictions, including a June 2020 ruling by the Seoul High Court that sentenced him to two years and six months in prison, suspended for four years, for violating the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes, including fraud.
The court said in explaining the sentence, "He committed the offense again without reflecting during the suspended sentence for the same type of crime." It added, "Considering the method of the crime, the nature of the offense is poor. He has consistently avoided responsibility and has not completed restitution or received forgiveness from the victim."

jyseo@fnnews.com Seo Ji-yoon Reporter