Two cryptocurrency cases account for 68.2 billion won in Korea's six-month fraud sweep

Of the 26,782 arrests, the five categories the National Office of Investigation broke out account for 12,331 people, or 46%, and the announcement does not sort the rest by category ^[1]. The categories also differ in shape. Direct-transaction scams on secondhand platforms produced 30,757 cases against 7,436 suspects, about 4.1 cases each ^[2]. Unauthorized deposit-taking and multilevel marketing ran the other way, 363 cases and 694 people, roughly 1.9 suspects per case ^[3].

The money runs the opposite direction from the caseload. The Cambodia-based ring's take works out at about 89.7 million won for each of its 456 victims ^[5]. The monthly rate the Seoul operators advertised on deposited XRP comes to 18% to 21.6% a year before compounding ^[7].

The Busan cases ran on mobile phones. Loan applicants were talked into opening mobile phone accounts and then had the handsets taken; one ring took 236 phones worth 450 million won, about 1.9 million won a handset ^[9][6].

Police added 78 dedicated tracking officers in March, 7.8% of the 1,006 personnel now assigned to the fraud tracking teams ^[10][11]. "We will use the malicious fraud tracking teams to pursue suspects who have not yet been arrested until the end," said Hong Seok-ki, head of the National Office of Investigation at the Korean National Police Agency ^[12].

Fraud may have moved onto consumer marketplaces and crypto deposit promises, where the case counts are highest and the single-case won amounts largest ^[2][7][8]. Or reported fraud fell 8% because victims of small direct-transaction scams stopped filing, and the sweep counted the same activity more carefully ^[12]. The announcement gives case and suspect counts by scam category without a breakdown of victim losses by payment channel, so neither reading can be checked against bank-channel fraud ^[14]. In my view the first is closer, and the figure that would settle it is won per reported case: if cases keep falling while won per case rises, the losses have concentrated in fewer and larger deposit schemes; if both fall together, the improved arrest rate is measuring a shrinking pool.