"1.8% Monthly Interest" Lure and Even a Stand-In Actor Used in 12.3 Billion Won Scam Ring

[Financial News] A group of investment scammers who tricked dozens of people into handing over more than 10 billion won by promising high interest rates on deposits of the virtual asset XRP (Ripple) has been caught by police.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency Cyber Investigation Unit said on the 29th that it had sent suspects A, 29, and B, 29, to the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office in custody on charges including fraud under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes and violations of the Act on the Regulation of Conducting Fund-Raising Business Without Permission. For C, 29, the alleged ringleader who is staying overseas, police obtained an arrest warrant and issued an Interpol red notice. The three were found to be friends.
They are accused of setting up a fake Ripple deposit site from Oct. 16 to Oct. 23 and stealing about 12.3 billion won in cryptocurrency from 71 victims.
Police found that the group had been preparing the crime since September last year and created a fake investment site, FXRP Network (Fxrpntwork.com), by combining the actual blockchain company Flare Network and FXRP. They then lured victims by falsely promoting the scheme through YouTube channels, Naver Blog, and Korean Wikipedia, claiming that "staking Ripple can generate monthly profits of 1.5% to 1.8%." To get around the travel rule, which prevents domestic exchanges from directly sending virtual assets worth more than 1 million won to unidentified personal wallets, they also posted false information on Korean Wikipedia and elsewhere, saying that deposits could only be made through designated overseas exchanges such as Binance.
The group planned the scam to coincide with the launch of the official token. They even hired a stand-in actor, D, 34, to impersonate an Upbit developer and produced promotional videos. After victims transferred Ripple from domestic exchanges to the overseas exchange wallets designated by the group, the scammers shut down the site and disappeared. Police arrested D, an accomplice, but did not detain him and plan to send him to prosecutors without custody soon.
Meanwhile, after suspect A was arrested first, B turned off his mobile phone and fled across the country using only cash. He was later caught while traveling in a passenger car registered under his father's name, after police used vehicle tracking techniques.
Four days after receiving the tip, police traced the movement of the cryptocurrency on Oct. 31 last year and urgently froze about 17.3 billion won worth of virtual assets held at overseas exchanges, including 11.32 million USDT and 240,000 Ripple. The investigation found that the total scale of the fraud reached about 27.3 billion won. The largest individual victim suffered losses of 1.6 billion won.
A Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency official said, "We will do our utmost to help victims recover by proceeding with the return of the frozen cryptocurrency and by confiscating and preserving the criminal proceeds for forfeiture," adding, "As scams disguised as the launch of new virtual asset systems are on the rise, please be careful not to be misled by inaccurate information."

[email protected] Seo Ji-yoon Reporter