<Anchor>
The police are currently chasing after a group of people who have been deceived into investing in a company that will be listed soon and then disappeared after receiving money.
Victims said they believed the news that some media actually published the article and that it would be listed.
We will continue the story after viewing the exclusive coverage of reporter Shin Yong-shik.
<Reporter>
In February, Mr. A, in his 30s, received a call from Mr. B, who is the manager of an investment consulting firm for a company scheduled to be listed.
He said high returns are guaranteed, and he recommended buying privately held shares in a company called Beno D Global.
He was skeptical at first, but Mr. B asked me to check the article.
[Mr. B / Call recording at the time: Please do a search and I will send you one or two articles.
They say that (listing) is possible even in May or June if you submit a review audit report.] In
an article written by economic media, Benodi Global signed a contract to export 50,000 electric motors to the North American market, 5,000 pyeong in Pyeongtaek. There was talk of expanding the scale of the factory.
[A/Victim: When writing the article, the reporters must have checked the facts and covered it, so I did not think that the contents were false.]
When the company said that it would be listed in June, Mr. A got married a few months later. I invested 70 million won by pouring out all the funds I had collected for this.
He was only waiting for the listing, but suddenly, neither Mr. B nor the Beno D Global Company could be contacted.
It turned out that the representative of Benodi Global and a consulting firm specializing in companies scheduled to be listed were the same person as Mr. Lee.
[Mr./Victim A: It was marriage funds to prepare a house for rent.
But now, because of this, that dream was shattered in an instant, and it is a very difficult situation right now...
.]
About 100 people gathered in the open chat room complaining of damage.
[C/Victim: (Amount of damage) is about 50 million won.
I have 10 million won in extra money, and the rest are all credit card loans, and then I get a loan from insurance.]
I visited the Benodi Global office.
The door was firmly shut, and even the CEO of the company, Mr. Lee, did not answer the phone.
[Administrative office official: It was there until the end of March.
He reported moving out on April 1st.
I moved in on February 1.] After
receiving the complaints from the victims, the police booked Mr. B and Mr. Lee, the CEO, and started a full-scale investigation.
[Kim Min-ho / Attorney: Right now, entry and exit is free, and there is a risk of destroying or escaping the main evidence, so we need to urgently arrest this culprit or secure his identity through a prior warrant…
.]
(Video coverage: Choi Jun-sik, video editing: Jeon Min-gyu, VJ: Kim Jong-gap, Lee Jun-young, Roh Jae-min)
---
<Anchor>
Here is Shin Yong-shik, a reporter from the Ministry of Social Affairs who covered this content.
Q. How was the 'article' used for fraud written?
[Reporter Shin Yong-shik: I met 7 victims, and they all told me that they decided to invest after seeing the article about the good news of Benodi Global, so I checked how the article was written by the people who wrote the article myself. It was a little different from writing an article.
A person in the cable media specializing in economics said at first that he was not a reporter but a marketing employee, but when I asked how he wrote the article, he said that he also worked as an intern reporter. I wrote it down, but I didn't do any separate fact-checking.
Another reporter from a business magazine answered that he had checked the facts of the article through a series of processes, but when I asked what was the method, he said he did not check it himself and said he would take down the article, and the article was actually deleted soon.]
Q. How to avoid damage?
[Reporter Shin Yong-shik: The most important thing is that there should be no corporate publicity articles that do not go through this confirmation.
If you are a company that you do not know well and send you a link to an article with an investment recommendation, you should open the article.
In this case, there was no way to verify that the content of the article was correct.
There was an export contract in the North American market, but the counterparty company decided to supply the motor to a domestic company, but there is no indication of where the domestic company is.
You should be careful with articles that list only vague and rosy plans like this.]