Fraud Crimes Increased by 10% in the First Half of This Year, 'Online Scams Using Platforms like Telegram Surge'
The number of fraud crimes reported to the prosecution in the first half of this year increased by 10% compared to the same period last year. Experts have analyzed that fraud through social networking services (SNS) such as Telegram and Naver Band has surged.
(omitted)
Experts noted that scams using platforms like Telegram, Naver Band, and KakaoTalk open chat rooms have become more frequent, leading to a significant increase in victims. While messengers like Telegram were previously used mainly by younger people, more older users have recently joined, resulting in scams targeting people of all ages.
Two prominent examples are stock-leading chat room scams and romance scams. Stock-leading room scams involve promising high returns and deceiving victims by claiming to share stock information. Victims are lured into paying to join paid chat rooms with the promise of receiving premium information, only to have hundreds of thousands of won stolen.
Romance scams involve fraudulent activities disguised as romantic relationships. A recent example is the case of Jeon Cheongjo, who scammed former fencing national team member Nam Hyun-hee. Other common tactics include scammers posing as foreign military personnel or refugees, sending messages like "I want to come to Korea" or "I want to meet you" to lure victims into sending money.
In online scams, while victims often send money via bank transfers, experts have noted an increase in cases where payments are made in virtual assets, making it nearly impossible to recover the stolen funds.
Pureun “Ian” Hong, managing partner at Decent Law Firm, commented, "Recently, a wide variety of scams have surged on platforms like open KakaoTalk chat rooms, Telegram, and Naver Band. The common characteristic of these scams is that the perpetrators introduce themselves in an unverifiable online setting and then ask for money. People should be cautious about sending money to individuals they cannot verify."
