South Korea’s prosecutors have indicted 130 individuals involved in a cryptocurrency scam operation, with some linked to violent crime groups. Victims have suffered losses totaling more than one billion won since June 2023. The suspects operated seven call centers in the Seoul metropolitan area from June 2023 to April 2025, luring victims with fake investment products and cryptocurrency investment schemes. Of those charged, 38 were detained on charges of organizing or joining a criminal organization, while 92 were indicted for fraud and violations of the special law on fraud victim restitution without detention.
Investigators have frozen assets worth roughly 1.2 billion won and will continue to track and preserve hidden assets in cooperation with Incheon Police. This case is part of a wider rise in large-scale cryptocurrency hacks and scams observed globally in 2025.
Chainalysis reports that scammers stole more than 3.4 billion dollars in crypto assets during the year. The Bybit exchange hack in February accounted for about 1.5 billion dollars of that total.
Over the past 12 months, North Korean hackers are reported to have stolen approximately 2.02 billion dollars in crypto assets, the largest share. Separately, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently indicted seven groups for defrauding individual investors of about 14 million dollars, with reports that some organizations used deepfake videos of prominent financial figures to mislead investors.
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