8000 People Arrested in 2 Months for 'Fraud Crimes' Including Voice Phishing and Internet Scams

National Police Agency's National Investigation Headquarters Special Crackdown Until June

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Gwan-ju] As the police are pushing for a large-scale special crackdown on fraud crimes that infringe on the livelihood economy, it has been revealed that more than 8,000 fraud offenders were caught over two months.

The National Investigation Headquarters (NIH) of the National Police Agency announced on the 18th that they arrested 8,076 fraud offenders, including telephone financial fraud and cyber fraud, during February and March, and among them, 670 were detained.

The police launched a special crackdown on fraud crimes such as ▲telephone financial fraud ▲daily life fraud (insurance, employment, jeonse fraud) ▲cyber fraud from February to June.

By type, cyber fraud had the highest number of arrests with 15,674 cases. This was followed by telephone financial fraud with 3,463 cases, insurance fraud with 268 cases, jeonse fraud with 31 cases, and employment fraud with 18 cases. The number of people arrested was 3,882 for cyber fraud, 3,179 for telephone financial fraud, 944 for insurance fraud, 47 for jeonse fraud, and 24 for employment fraud.

The police especially expanded the personnel of the Crime Proceeds Tracking Team in the provincial police agencies to 149 and focused on supporting the actual recovery of victims' damages, confiscating and preserving approximately 29 billion KRW worth of total criminal proceeds. The Jeonbuk Jeonju Deokjin Police Station also confiscated and preserved about 9.4 billion KRW worth of corporate-owned real estate related to a case where 756 victims were defrauded of about 70 billion KRW by being promised the construction and transfer of a solar power plant.

Additionally, the police concentrated on cracking down on face-to-face extortion-type telephone financial fraud crimes, which have recently increased, arresting cash collectors and immediately returning the confiscated damages to the victims at the scene. In Goryeong, Gyeongbuk, in January this year, 11 cash collectors who deceived victims by claiming that existing loans had to be repaid for low-interest loans were arrested for embezzling a total of about 850 million KRW, of which 247 million KRW was returned.

Meanwhile, the police are operating the "Telecommunication Financial Fraud Investigation Situation Room" to prevent additional damage. From January to March this year, 1,817 suspicious telephone financial fraud numbers were blocked, and the telephone number blocking procedure was simplified to enable efficient prevention.

An NIH official said, "We will continue to strongly crack down by mobilizing all investigative capabilities against livelihood-infringing crimes that threaten the livelihood economy," and urged, "If you are asked to transfer money by phone or online, it is 100% telephone financial fraud, so immediately hang up, and be cautious of investment fraud and online fraud that guarantee principal or high returns."