Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office Indicts Cross-border Money Transfer Gang for $1.4 Billion

The International Crime Investigation Department of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office detained and indicted a four-member gang on suspicion of violating the Foreign Exchange Transaction Act, the Specific Financial Information Act, and obstruction of business. The gang is suspected of sending a total of 1.74 trillion won (about $1.4 billion) to overseas companies in Japan, Hong Kong and other places as agents on 542 occasions from April last year to March this year under the name of jointly managed overseas money transfer companies.

In addition, the gang is also suspected of using money sent to overseas accounts to buy cryptocurrencies on overseas trading platforms and transfer them again to another overseas and domestic trading platform account for dumping from September last year to March this year, and trading crypto assets without declarations from financial information analysts. It is projected that the gang conducted more than 32,000 transactions and dumped 1.5 trillion won worth of virtual currency.

The prosecution believes that they committed the crime in an organized manner to obtain the difference in the so-called "kimchi premium" (the phenomenon that the domestic virtual currency market is higher than the overseas market).