Police Launch War on Crime... Advancing Measures to Eradicate Malicious Fraud

Increase from 230,000 cases in 2017 to 326,000 cases in 2022
Establishment of 'Voice Phishing Crime Investigation Division' and implementation of stringent measures

The National Police Agency's National Investigation Headquarters announced on the 6th that it will enhance and implement measures to eradicate malicious fraud in response to the recent surge of new types of fraud.

The police have reorganized the targets for eradication into the "Top 10 Malicious Frauds," including organized new frauds such as investment leading room fraud, romance scams, and smishing (bait messages, etc.), and will implement comprehensive eradication measures.

First, to focus on special crackdowns on malicious fraud and the arrest of fraud suspects, a task force (TF) chaired by the head of the National Investigation Headquarters will be formed at the headquarters, and dedicated investigation teams and malicious fraud tracking teams will be operated in each city and provincial police agency's direct investigation departments and police station investigation divisions by sector.

The four ongoing crackdown tasks, including jeonse fraud and investment leading room fraud, will be extended until the end of the year, and six new tasks, including telecommunication financial fraud (voice phishing), romance scams, and smishing, will be newly pursued sequentially starting this month.

Along with this, the police will strengthen collaboration with financial and telecommunications companies centered on the "Telecommunication Financial Fraud Integrated Reporting and Response Center" and establish an "Integrated Response Platform" that analyzes data related to already occurred fraud crimes and newly received various reports and tips to proactively block crime methods.

Efforts will also be accelerated to enact the "Basic Act on Fraud Prevention" to respond to new types of fraud such as illegal investment leading rooms and purchase agency part-time job fraud. The bill includes the basis for establishing a "Fraud Integrated Reporting and Response Center" that performs functions such as collecting and analyzing fraud crime information, issuing victim warnings and alerts, and blocking suspicious phone numbers.

The police plan to issue public warnings and alerts when analyzing reports and tips data reveals the latest trending fraud methods or new and variant fraud techniques.

Additionally, through the newly established "Crime Proceeds Tracking Investigation Division" at the headquarters, the police will actively track and preserve proceeds from malicious fraud crimes and link this to victim recovery. International cooperation will also be strengthened to swiftly extradite malicious fraud suspects who have fled overseas.

Previously, from August 2022 to January this year, the police focused on cracking down on the "Top 7 Malicious Frauds," including jeonse fraud and voice phishing, arresting a total of 49,497 cases and 62,175 individuals, of whom 4,121 were detained.

At the same time, jeonse fraud was prosecuted under the "Organized Crime Group Offense" law, the related laws were amended to expand protection against voice phishing, and the Telecommunication Financial Fraud Integrated Reporting and Response Center was opened to enable one-stop reporting and tip submission.

Recently, the overall number of fraud crimes has steadily increased from about 230,000 cases in 2017 to about 326,000 cases in 2022, and the proportion of fraud crimes among all crimes rose from 13.9% to 22.0% during the same period. In particular, as new types of fraud with strong characteristics of organization, online, non-face-to-face, and cross-border have increased, making tracking difficult, the fraud crime detection rate dropped by 20.6 percentage points from 79.5% in 2017 to 58.9% in 2022.

Yoon Hee-geun, Commissioner of the National Police Agency, said, "With the goal of waging a 'war against fraud,' we will focus on comprehensive measures that include active arrest activities of fraud suspects, blocking additional damage through prediction and analysis of fraud crime trends, and actively recovering criminal proceeds."