122 People's Gift Certificates Pooled, 800 Million Won "Wiped Out" at Clothing Store... Suspected Abuse of Onnuri Gift Certificates' "Send as a Gift" Feature

21.6 Billion Won in Gift Certificates Pooled in 327 Accounts, Used in Concentrated Payments

Suspicions have emerged that the “Send as a Gift” feature of Digital Onnuri Gift Certificates was abused to pool certificates and make payments at specific merchants. At one clothing store, gift certificates worth 800 million won from 122 people were reportedly used in full through a single account. Transactions suspected of being part of a so-called “corporate cash-out scheme,” in which certificates obtained by corporations and others were transferred to personal accounts and converted into cash, were also detected.

Photo unrelated to the specific content of the article. Yonhap News.

According to Yonhap News Agency on October 23, an analysis of data on individual purchases, use and gifts of Digital Onnuri Gift Certificates, submitted by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups to Jang Cheol-min of the Democratic Party of Korea, a member of the National Assembly’s Trade, Industry, Energy, SMEs and Startups Committee, found that from March to November 2025, certificates worth 21.6 billion won were pooled in 327 accounts and used in concentrated payments at 271 merchants nationwide.

800 Million Won Pooled in One Account... Paid in Full at Clothing Store

At a clothing store in Wonju, Gangwon Province, gift certificates worth 800 million won from 122 people were pooled in a single account and then used in full. At a retail store in Dongjak-gu, Seoul, certificates worth 2.5 billion won from more than 370 people were used through around 20 accounts, Jang said.

A total of 3,967 accounts were used to send the gift certificates. Jang said transactions worth more than 4.1 billion won involving 80 of those accounts were suspected of being part of a “corporate cash-out scheme,” in which certificates obtained through other channels, including corporations, were transferred to personal accounts and converted into cash.

Suspicious Transaction Detection Criteria Applied... 94% Flagged

Jang’s office said that when it separately applied the Ministry of SMEs and Startups’ Fraud Detection System (FDS) criteria, it was able to flag 307 (94%) of the 327 accounts that pooled the gift certificates.

“We need to rebuild the Onnuri Gift Certificate system so that the money does not leak away as profits for a small number of people using other people’s identities,” Jang said. “Since the monthly limit on what one person can receive was capped at 1 million won in 2026, cases of pooling gifts have disappeared. However, the facts behind the earlier organized illegal distribution must be uncovered through a request for a criminal investigation.”

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