▲ Seoul Northern District Prosecutors' Office
Two co-operators of a lending company who drew billions of won by attracting hundreds of ordinary investors with fake investment products were handed over to trial.
The Seoul Northern District Prosecutor's Office of Health and Juvenile Criminals (Director Prosecutor Jeong-Ryeol Lee) announced on the 12th that the 37-year-old A, a former representative of a P2P lending platform company and affiliated loan company, was arrested for fraud, and that 39-year-old B, the current accomplice, was prosecuted without custody. .
P2P loans are operated by posting specific loan products online, collecting investments from unspecified people, giving loans to specific borrowers, and distributing them to investors when they receive principal and interest from the borrowers.
They are suspected of being intercepted by investing 52.288 million won over 1394 times from 900 victims by posting fake investment products on the P2P lending platform site from June 2017 to June 2018.
Mr. B is also charged with using 9875 million won of the principal and interest of the loan repaid from the borrower from June 2018 to January 2019 as the company's operating capital (business embezzlement).
According to the prosecution, they directly operated a lender linked to a platform company, and were investigated to commit fraud by abusing the P2P loan system.
They announced that they would lend the investment money to the borrower of a real estate business and use it as a new real estate purchase, but the borrower was Mr. A's family, and the investment amounted to 70 million won was used as the company's operating expenses.
They were dressed up as a healthy company that recovered 100% of their investments, but they used a ``blocking back'' technique that used the victims' investments as repayment funds for other investors.
Their investment products were limited to 100,000 to 20 million won per investment, and most of the victims were ordinary citizens, such as office workers, housewives, prospective campers, and unemployed people in their 20s and 50s who made small investments.
Among the victims, it is known that there are cases of raising children on single-income and investing the money saved to contribute to the household.
The prosecution has initiated an investigation based on dozens of complaints that have been filed since June 2019, tracking accounts and working with the Financial Supervisory Service to determine the full picture of the crime.
(Photo = Yonhap News TV, Seoul Northern District Prosecutor's Office, Yonhap News)