Posing as 'Identical Twin Brother' to Evade Arrest... 27,000 Fraud Suspects Caught

Malicious Fraud Tracking Teams Deployed at Police Stations Nationwide

Over the past six months, the police have focused on cracking down on financial crimes that harm people’s livelihoods—such as virtual asset investment scams, illegal private lending, and scams involving secondhand transactions—as well as on cybercrime, resulting in the apprehension of 27,000 individuals. Some of those arrested included a fugitive who had been evading law enforcement by stealing the identity of his identical twin brother, and a criminal who had been living under a fabricated identity for seven years.

Seoul Seodaemun-gu Police Agency National Investigation Headquarters. Photo by Jinhyung Kang

The Criminal Investigation Headquarters of the National Police Agency announced on the 21st that, as a result of a crackdown on financial crimes impacting people's livelihoods and cybercrime conducted from March to August this year, they apprehended 26,782 suspects across 61,482 cases, including 809 who were formally arrested.

First, the police caught 694 suspects across 363 cases involving unauthorized fundraising schemes. Whereas previous unauthorized investment scams used various products—such as solar power, real estate, and gold—to deceive victims, currently, a majority of crimes involve luring people under the pretense of investing in virtual assets. Since these schemes are mainly perpetrated online and remotely, victims are widely dispersed across the country. In response, investigations are being consolidated by local police agencies to better address the cases.

Regarding violations of the Capital Markets Act, police apprehended a total of 215 suspects across 83 cases. Most of these cases involved unregistered or unlicensed investment advisory services engaging in fraud. For example, the cybercrime unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency arrested two suspects who had set up a fake Ripple (XRP) coin staking site, siphoning off 27.3 billion won from the victims. They had falsely claimed that by depositing Ripple coins on their site, victims would earn monthly returns of 1.5% to 1.8%.

The crackdown on illegal private lending led to the detection of 1,730 suspects across 1,359 cases. Recently, tactics have diversified—from schemes using gift card reservation sales as a front to the expansion of new illegal lending methods. The authorities are also still discovering methods such as durable consumer loan scams, in which small-amount loans are offered as bait to financially vulnerable individuals, who are then tricked into lending out their identities—sometimes resulting in the victim becoming implicated in further crimes.

For cybercrime, police apprehended suspects in direct transaction scams, game scams, e-commerce scams, and email trade scams, in that order. The fraud types varied as well, ranging from those committed via secondhand online platforms to cases involving overseas criminal organizations. One case in Daegu involved swindling 550 million won from 296 victims under the pretense of selling electronics via secondhand transactions. In Daejeon, the authorities uncovered a scheme in which accounts used for ‘account laundering’ were recruited nationwide with the promise of a 40% share of criminal proceeds, then funneled to a phishing syndicate based in the Philippines; 560 million won was laundered into virtual assets, defrauding 884 victims in the process.

In addition, to respond to the annual increase in fraud-related crime, this year the National Police Agency created new “Malicious Fraud Tracking Teams” within integrated investigation units at police stations nationwide, and increased the number of dedicated investigators by 78. Currently, there are 284 teams (1,006 officers) operating at 261 locations across the country. These fraud tracking teams focus on apprehending wanted individuals and suspects in unsolved fraud cases across all categories. During the recent enforcement period, they apprehended 2,318 suspects across 4,204 cases.

As notable achievements, police arrested a fugitive who had been living under his identical twin’s identity, as well as a suspect charged under the Special Economic Crimes Act who had laundered his identity as a fictional person for seven years before being captured just before the statute of limitations expired.

Hong Seok-gi, head of the Criminal Investigation Headquarters, stated, “With the Chuseok holiday approaching, we expect an upsurge in consumer and financial activity, which could give rise to a variety of financial crimes targeting the public. By integrating nationwide cases and intensifying our investigations to apprehend the primary offenders, as well as relentlessly tracking down suspects who remain at large, we will ensure that justice is served.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.