Gangwon Provincial Police Agency arrests 58-member ring that distributed about 100 mule accounts and laundered 3 billion won

【Financial News, Chuncheon = Kim Gi-seop, reporter】A group of local seniors and juniors in their 20s was caught by police after supplying accounts to a Chinese phishing crime ring and laundering criminal proceeds worth around 3 billion won.
According to the Gangwon Provincial Police Agency on the 10th, the Metropolitan Criminal Investigation Unit apprehended 58 people on suspicion of conspiring with a phishing crime ring based in China to recruit and distribute mule accounts and launder criminal proceeds, among other offenses. Police detained eight, including recruiters and withdrawal agents, and referred 50 others, including account holders, to prosecutors without detention.
Investigators found that from January to around November last year, the group handed over to the phishing ring about 100 accounts collected from 46 account holders after promising them payment. The group also laundered about 3 billion won stolen by the phishing ring through team-mission scams and investment-advice scams by withdrawing the money with debit cards linked to mule accounts and handing it to cash-collection agents.
Most of the members were local seniors and juniors in their early to mid-20s who divided up roles as ringleader, recruiters and withdrawal agents. Three people, including a recruiter identified as A, also confined an account holder in an office and beat the person as a group because the holder had disclosed details of the crime to acquaintances.
The investigation began early this year after an account holder who had been confined and assaulted by members of the group came forward. Police established the scale of the operation by analyzing transaction records for mule accounts and call records between accomplices. The ringleader had already been detained and was in custody for the same offenses. Police said they would continue their crackdown, focusing investigative resources on crimes involving the distribution of items registered in other people's names.
Kwak Byungwoo, chief of the Gangwon Provincial Police Agency, said, “In this case, too, a large number of account holders who handed over their accounts in exchange for payment have been referred to prosecutors.” He urged the public: “If you hand over a bankbook or mobile phone in exchange for money or valuables, you too may be punished. So firmly refuse even if an acquaintance asks, and report it to the police.”

[email protected] Kim Gi-seop Reporter