The First Violation Case of the Virtual Asset User Protection Act Enforced in July Last Year
Officials from a coin management company who manipulated virtual asset (coin) prices to obtain unfair profits of 7.1 billion KRW have been indicted while in custody. This is the first case applying the Virtual Asset User Protection Act, which was first enforced in July last year.
According to the legal community on the 3rd, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors' Office Joint Investigation Team on Virtual Asset Crimes (led by Chief Prosecutor Park Geon-wook) announced that they have indicted the CEO A (33) and employee B (28) of a coin business management company for violating the Virtual Asset User Protection Act by manipulating the price of D Coin. This case was transferred through a fast track (emergency notification) from the financial authorities.
According to the prosecution, between July 22 and October 25 of last year, they received a large amount of coins from the D Coin issuing foundation and obtained unfair profits of about 7.1 billion KRW through price manipulation. They used an automated trading program to repeatedly execute trading contracts by buying and selling at market price (increasing trading volume), ▲submitted fake buy orders at prices lower than the immediate execution price and canceled them immediately if the transaction price changed, thereby creating the appearance of buying pressure.
In relation to this, the prosecution has confiscated criminal proceeds including a 3.3 billion KRW apartment lease deposit of A and virtual assets worth 3.5 billion KRW.
A prosecution official said, "We will thoroughly investigate and strictly punish unfair trading crimes such as price manipulation that disrupt the order of the virtual asset market."
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