The police will disseminate information about new types of gambling and cryptocurrency-related crimes to schools and parents in Seoul in order to prevent juvenile crime victimization among elementary, middle, and high school students.
On April 22, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency announced that it will issue a "School Bell" alert in cooperation with the Seoul Metropolitan Autonomous Police Committee to prevent cybercrime. The School Bell system is a collaborative effort between the police and the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, delivering information about relevant crime types online to 1,373 schools and 780,000 parents across Seoul.
The cases being shared this time involve crimes that lure youths into registering cryptocurrency accounts using their iris information. In these cases, criminals entice teenagers via open chat rooms by offering 20,000 won in cash if they provide their iris data. After obtaining this biometric information, the perpetrators induce youths?who are otherwise ineligible to open cryptocurrency accounts?to fraudulently register accounts using their parents' birth dates. The scheme operates as a pyramid system, offering additional cash rewards for referring friends, which exposes teenagers' personal information to criminal activity.
Another case includes fraud in which teenagers are deceived on social media (SNS) into participating in so-called "no-lose roulette games," where they pay money to play but never receive the promised prizes. If a teenager pays to participate in such a roulette game, it constitutes a gambling offense.
Park Hyunsoo, acting chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, stated, "Recently, there has been an increase in cyber-enabled crimes targeting youths via SNS. We are strengthening crime prevention education and intelligence gathering through school police officers (SPOs)." He added, "If you encounter similar cases, you should immediately report them to 112 and consult with an SPO."
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