Police Special Crackdown on Investment Leading Rooms: 3,300 Arrested, 734 Detained

Cooperative Investigations with Laos, Thailand, and the Philippines

The police announced on the 26th that, as a result of a special crackdown on investment leading chat rooms over 17 months, they arrested 3,300 people, of whom 734 were detained.

Police flag of the National Police Agency. Photo by Kim Hyun-min

Investment leading chat room scams approach victims via phone calls, text messages (SMS), and social networking services (SNS), claiming that principal guarantees and high returns are possible. Promoters (using fake IDs) continuously post false information in public chat rooms, claiming high profits, and deceive victims through various tricks such as showing fake stock home trading systems (HTS).

Crimes related to investment leading chat rooms are characterized by being online and non-face-to-face, making it difficult to apprehend the main perpetrators as reports are scattered nationwide, and investigative efforts have overlapped. In response, the National Investigation Headquarters established a plan to enhance the response system for investment leading chat rooms and launched a focused investigation. As a result, last year, 7,761 cases (with 14,255 victims) were consolidated into 172 cases, among which 27 cases successfully apprehended the masterminds.

The police immediately arrest perpetrators located domestically from overseas-based organizations, and for those located abroad, they provide personal information and whereabouts to the target countries and request prompt arrests. In August last year, eight members of a fraud organization based in Bangkok, Thailand, were arrested and extradited in September. In January this year, the mastermind of the Golden Triangle-based investment leading chat room residing in Vientiane, Laos, was arrested locally and extradited.

A police official stated, “The scam methods are so sophisticated that even police officers fall victim. Above all, people must be aware that everything online could be fake,” and added, “We will continue to do our best to prevent and crack down on various crimes targeting economically vulnerable groups.”