Delivery App Data Stolen to Enable Revenge Attacks; Ringleader Sentenced to 3 Years

All the defendants in a group accused of carrying out “retaliatory attacks” were sentenced to prison terms in the first trial. They allegedly stole delivery app customers’ personal information and provided victims’ addresses to a private revenge group, and in some cases went to people’s homes and scattered human feces.

Kim Juseok, presiding judge of the Seoul Southern District Court’s Criminal Division 6 (Single-Judge), sentenced the ringleader, identified by the surname Jeong, to three years in prison on October 7. A co-defendant surnamed Yeo was sentenced to two years in prison, had bail revoked and was taken into custody in court.

Judge Kim also sentenced a co-defendant surnamed Lee, who had instructed others to provide delivery addresses, to three months in prison for some of the offenses and two years and nine months for the remaining offenses.

“The information people entrust to businesses out of necessity in their daily lives must be protected; this is the minimum prerequisite for upholding trust and peace of mind,” Judge Kim said in his ruling. “They turned the place people should consider safest—their homes—into targets for acts of retaliation accessible to an unspecified number of people.”

He added, “There were 25 victims, and the offenses were repeated for more than four months,” and noted that “acts that provide the means for private retaliation cause serious harm to society, making severe punishment inevitable.”

Lee’s side argued that he was merely an accessory to the property damage and trespassing offenses. Judge Kim rejected the argument, saying, “It is reasonable to find that Lee tacitly or repeatedly conspired with unidentified individuals and their operatives to commit the trespassing and property damage offenses, and exercised functional control over the acts by making a material contribution to them.” He added, “The fact that he did not personally enter the residences or throw human feces does not change this conclusion.”

The defendants were indicted on charges of accepting requests through Telegram from an unspecified number of people to carry out retaliatory attacks and committing offenses in areas including Yangcheon-gu, Seoul, such as smearing filth on the front doors of other people’s homes and scrawling graffiti with spray paint.

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