High school students who rented officetels for study rooms and hired adults to distribute drugs have been brought to trial.
The Incheon District Prosecutors' Office Special Investigation Team on Drug Crimes (Chief Prosecutor Kim Yeonsil) announced on the 16th that three third-year high school students, including A (18), were arrested and indicted on charges related to psychotropic substances under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes.
They are accused of selling, possessing, or using drugs worth approximately 270 million KRW, including methamphetamine, through Telegram from October 2021 to July last year.
It was investigated that A learned the method of the crime from a drug dealer he met through Telegram, then recruited peers as accomplices to commit the crime. He requested his father to rent an officetel for a "study room" and then used the place as a drug distribution office.
A and others not only used drugs themselves but also hired six adults as drug couriers, hiding drugs at specific locations and informing buyers of the locations in a so-called "throwing" method, earning approximately 122 million KRW in profits.
They used Telegram, which guarantees anonymity, and virtual currency, which is difficult to trace financially, during the commission of the crimes.
A prosecution official stated, "It was also confirmed that two of them took the drug sales profits from the remaining one and opened and operated a new drug sales account," adding, "Drug crimes using the anonymity and non-face-to-face nature of SNS are rapidly increasing, and people in their teens and twenties are also involved in drug distribution."
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