The financial authorities have uncovered a payment gateway company (PG company) that created virtual accounts for the purpose of circulating criminal funds for organizations operating illegal gambling sites.
On July 22, the Financial Supervisory Service announced that it had reported four PG companies to investigative agencies after confirming that they either provided virtual accounts to be used for criminal activities in an attempt to increase sales, or directly participated in crimes such as fraud and embezzlement.
Since the first half of this year, the Financial Supervisory Service has been operating a real-time monitoring system to respond to illegal business activities by PG companies. This system collects and analyzes transaction records of virtual accounts provided by PG companies to merchants every month in order to detect suspicious merchants.
Through this system, PG companies were found to have registered organizations operating voice phishing and illegal gambling sites as merchants by disguising them as ordinary online shops, and provided them with virtual accounts for criminal purposes.
It was confirmed that these PG companies transferred funds obtained through voice phishing and gambling proceeds deposited into the virtual accounts to the accounts of criminal organizations, receiving large commissions in return.
There was also a case where another PG company provided virtual accounts for investment fraud crimes that used high-return products as bait. In addition, the authorities uncovered a CEO of a PG company who manipulated card approval information to create fake sales and used them as collateral for loans, as well as employees and executives of PG companies who misappropriated settlement payments that should have been paid to merchants.
The Financial Supervisory Service stated, "We will respond to unhealthy business practices of PG companies through strict sanctions, enhancement of the real-time monitoring system, and strengthened cooperation with investigative agencies."
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