In South Korea, a 60-year-old fraudster who evaded justice for a serious crypto scam worth $13 million has been captured.
Arrest of the Criminal
The Seoul Metropolitan Police apprehended the man in the Gwanak District on Wednesday after he discarded a cigarette butt on the street and attempted to flee. When questioned, he refused to show ID and offered money to officers, pleading, "let me go just this once." He then pretended to be on a phone call and tried to run again but was arrested on the spot.
Fraud History
Investigators later discovered that the man, identified only as A, was behind a 17.7 billion won ($13 million) crypto scam that duped about 1,300 people between 2018 and 2019. After the fraud, he vanished in 2020, but his run ended this week when he was handed over to the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office. He was already a wanted fugitive with arrest warrants on 10 charges, including fraud and assault.
Other Careless Scammers
This isn’t the first case where a crypto scammer has been caught due to a small mistake. In 2012, James Zhong stole 50,000 bitcoins from Silk Road and became ensnared in his asset storage methods, leading to his arrest. In 2022, the couple Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein, linked to the theft of 119,000 bitcoins in 2016, were arrested because their excessive openness and careless actions led to their exposure.
The capture of this fraudster highlights how even minor mistakes can lead to arrest and confirms that justice, though slow, eventually catches up with criminals.
