South Korea Crypto Criminals Stole Over $2 Billion In 2 Years: Report

The South Korea crypto criminals are known as one of the best in what they do – mainly because the country is easily in one of the top five crypto destinations in the world. A new report is in the latest cryptocurrency news, showing that the crypto scammers from this country managed to steal more than $2 billion in only 2 years.

The report was officially unveiled by the South Korea Justice Ministry, estimating a loss of 2.69 trillion won (around $2.28 billion) to cryptocurrency related crimes in the past two years. The statistics, as the altcoin news show, cover a time period from July 2017 to June 2019 specifically, in which the Justice Department claims that it has indicted and detained 132 crypto criminals and fraud scheme operators. Another 288 criminals were charged without any physical detention as the Ministry revealed.

The report also showed the efforts of the Justice Department and the Justice Minister Park Sang-Kim to enforce new crypto criminal laws and therefore bring the South Korea crypto criminals to justice. For instance, it revealed that the country has seen an increasing number of opaque (or quasi anonymous) accounts on cryptocurrency exchanges, which make user identification and tracking asset movement difficult.

In addition to this, a couple of minor exchanges from the country resorted to using “beehive accounts” to circumvent a 2018 ban on the existence of anonymous crypto exchange platforms. As the reports by many best cryptocurrency news sites show, the exchanges in question keep their users’ funds in their corporate bank accounts so that the identities of their users become private.

In an attempt to bring an end to this, the government tried to veto the practice – but a court stopped the manoeuvre dead in its tracks based on a ruling that it would be inappropriate to close the accounts by the corporate banks – held by exchanges.

The government could compel all of the exchanges to be more liable to their users in the case of fraud or crimes and hope that the increased exposure would cause them to sit up and play ball. However, even a solution like this would be indicative of the same fact. All in all, South Korea desperately needs some clear regulations with its crypto industry in order for the crime wave to be effectively stopped.