Leaders of $1.5 billion South Korean fraud jailed

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Six leaders of South Korea’s $1.5 billion (2 trillion won) fraud on crypto exchange V Global have been sentenced to prison terms of up to eight years, but three have not been detained so that they could challenge certain charges in court.

V Global operated between July 2020 and April 2021 and attracted around 50,000 investors promising a 300% return on investment as well as large payouts for referring new clients.

According to a translation of December 26 reports from South Korean media such as Economist.co.kr, two high-ranking executives, named Mr. Yang and Mr. Oh, were given eight years and three years each for their roles in the investor scam.

Four other unnamed leaders were sentenced to three years in prison with five years probation.

However, three of the six people have not yet been arrested, as they have claimed innocence on certain charges and have the right to defend themselves in court.

The defendants only trusted VGlobal’s management team, evaded responsibility, and once the investigation began, they destroyed evidence and interfered with the investigation, it said. the judge of the 12th Criminal Division of the Suwon District Court.

However, the judge reportedly granted some leniency to the defendants because the actual amount of fraud and the number of investors affected were lower than originally thought last year.

According to Kyeongin’s February reports, this was due to later evidence showing that approximately 10,000 investors had in fact made returns from V Global via payments from multi-level marketing incentives such as customer recruitment bonuses. . Many are said to have then reinvested those profits into the platform before it was shut down.

Related: Co-Founder of $4 Billion OneCoin Scam Pleads Guilty, Faces 60 Years in Prison

It was alleged in June last year that the company paid out its customer referral bonuses, worth $1,000 per pop to existing investors via the influx of capital from new users, a la manner of a ponzi.

The latest legal action now brings the number of V Global executives behind bars to seven, with the CEO, known as Mr Lee, having already been sentenced to 22 years in prison in February.

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