South Korean police arrest YouTuber, 11 others in $231M crypto fraud case

South Korean police have arrested 12 suspects, together with a distinguished YouTuber, in reference to a $231 million crypto fraud that affected greater than 15,000 buyers, native media outlet Yna reported.

The report said that this arrest is a part of an intensive investigation, initially resulting in the apprehension of 215 people, with 12 in the end detained for his or her roles within the scheme.

In accordance with the police, the YouTuber known as Mr. A orchestrated a scheme that defrauded over 15,000 individuals out of 325.6 billion gained (roughly $231.5 million). The group allegedly lured buyers by promoting 28 totally different digital property as a part of an funding scheme from December 2021 to March 2023.

With a following of round 620,000 subscribers, Mr. A ran a pseudo-investment firm, promising profitable returns via digital asset gross sales. These property have been marketed to lift funds, primarily to satisfy refund requests from earlier members who suffered losses from a failed 2020 inventory funding on Mr. A’s advice.

To help the scheme, Mr. A established six consulting companies, ten gross sales firms, and 15 different organizations underneath his firm, dividing operations throughout a number of roles. These included administration, coin issuance, worth manipulation, database dealing with, coin gross sales, and money laundering.

The group reportedly promised buyers returns as excessive as 20 instances their preliminary investments. Nonetheless, police investigations confirmed that of the 28 digital property offered, solely six have been created by Mr. A’s staff.

These tokens have been listed on worldwide exchanges via brokers, the place the group inflated costs by buying them internally earlier than promoting them to buyers. The remaining 22 tokens weren’t self-issued and had low buying and selling volumes and restricted market worth.

The investigation started in February 2023 after a police report was filed regionally, resulting in an in depth evaluation of 1,444 accounts to hint fund flows.

Authorities later apprehended Mr. A in Australia, the place in addition they confiscated 22 Bitcoin from him. Police are actually pursuing additional asset restoration, with purposes filed to reclaim 47.eight billion gained, estimated at round $34 million.