Tag: fraud

The second son of Yoo Byung-eun, the owner of the company that ran the Chewol ferry that sunk 2014, has been captured by U.S. Marshals for extradition to South Korea. The law has finally caught up to him as well:

One of South Korea’s most notorious fugitives was arrested in the United States this week on​ embezzlement charges ​at home stemming from the 2014 sinking of a ferry that killed more than 300 people, many of them high school students.

Yoo Hyuk-kee, 48, was arrested Wednesday without incident at his home in Westchester County, New York, in response to an extradition request that South Korea submitted to the U.S., a Justice Department spokeswoman said.

Yoo’s arrest ends ​a prolonged mystery over the whereabouts of the man South Korean investigators consider to be a central figure in the scandal surrounding the ferry’s sinking, which traumatized the nation. Prosecutors have said that rampant embezzlement by the Yoo family helped create unsafe conditions and practices on the Sewol ferry.

Yoo, also​ known by his English name, Keith Yoo, is a son of Yoo Byung-eun, whose family controlled the Chonghaejin Marine Company, the operator of the Sewol. The overloaded ferry capsized off the southwestern tip of South Korea in April 2014​ in the country’s worst disaster in decades.

New York Times via a reader tip

You can read more at the link, but Yoo’s father committed suicide shortly after the sinking and his oldest brother has already completed two years in jail for fraud. If all of Yoo’s shady dealings are true, hopefully he will be spending a long time in jail as well.

The fraud accusations against left wing parliament member Yoon Mee-hyang, who used to run the Comfort Women charity, is only getting worse:

Then came the suicide of a Korean Council employee responsible for the operation of its shelter for the survivors.

The director of the shelter, known only by her surname Sohn, was found dead, pushing investigators to expand the scope of its probe.

Then came another layer of unexpected information. 

A granddaughter of Gil Won-ok, another survivor who had stayed at the shelter until recently, made a new accusation against Sohn, and Yoon, of money laundering. 

“The shelter’s director laundered money by taking an enormous amount of money from Grandma’s account and sending it to another account. I am sure people around her knew what she was doing,” the granddaughter wrote on the internet in reply to a news article on the director’s death. 

The prosecution summoned Gil’s son who stood partly by his daughter’s accusation. 

In a previous interview with a local news outlet, the son who Gil adopted demanded the shelter explain a big chunk of money withdrawn from her account three times ― in amounts of 4 million, 5 million and 20 million. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but with Sohn dead the only person that can answer what happened with the money is Yoon Mee-hyang. However, since Yoon is now a member of parliament she can ignore any summons from the prosecution for questioning. It appears she will be able to get away with all this with no outrage from the Korean left.

Here is the latest on the comfort woman fraud case involving left wing national assembly member Yoon Mee-hyang:

During the Friday press conference, Yoon read from a prepared statement before taking questions from the press, and rejected almost all accusations leveled against her. She also made it clear that she has no intention of giving up her seat. Yoon said she could not discuss all the “small details” because “a questioning by the prosecution is imminent,” referring to an ongoing criminal probe into the Korean Council.    

But while denying any misappropriation of funds, Yoon apologized for using her personal bank account to collect public donations, saying she had been “naïve to think it is okay as long as there was no problem about financial [transparency].”   

She said that after utilizing the donations, she transferred leftover funds to the Korean Council account, and added, “I have never used donations collected in my account for personal use.”  

Yoon said she has raised a total of 280 million won ($227,000) that was deposited into her personal bank account. She said she spent 230 million won of the total on projects related to comfort women victims that were outside the purview of the Korean Council, with the remainder used by the Korean Council. She added that she plans to disclose all of the details to the prosecution. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read much more at the link, but this may just be the tip of the iceberg involving this fraud. Yoon’s husband is noted convicted North Korean spy and fraudster himself.

Here is a warning from 8th Army that USFK servicemembers may be victims of credit card fraud:

American troops may have been among the victims of hackers who stole information from more than 1 million U.S. and South Korean credit cards and listed it for sale on the dark web over the past three months, the military said.

The thefts targeted unspecified business and financial entities in South Korea and included information on at least 38,000 U.S.-issued payment cards, according to an alert distributed by the Eighth Army via its Facebook page on Monday.

An unnamed credit union that provides services at U.S. Air Force bases in South Korea was among the potentially compromised organizations, it said.

Citing the large number of U.S.-issued payment cards involved and the significant presence of American troops in South Korea, the Major Cybercrime Unit-Korea said it could “assess with medium confidence that the purchase cards of U.S. service members may have been included in this compromise.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It is amazing how the fraudsters find ways to get money from people in just about every industry, even from animal rights groups:

Park So-youn, the head of Coexistence of Animal Rights on Earth (CARE), may be charged with multiple crimes including habitual fraud, as she allegedly had more than 250 animals euthanized without telling the group staffers and supporters.

Kwon Yu-rim, a lawyer at Yuldam Law Office, said Sunday they will file a complaint with the police as early as this week.

The move follows a CARE staffer revealing that some 250 healthy animals the group had rescued have been put down upon Park’s order between 2015 and 2018 without the knowledge of most of the other CARE members.

CARE is one of the nation’s largest animal rights organizations, collecting about 1.5 billion won to 2 billion won of donations per year.

Kwon said Park could face criminal charges as she has continued doing so without informing staffers and donors.

“CARE has been raising funds under the name of rescuing and treating abused animals. It has never informed people of the euthanasia practice and many of the donors would not have contributed their money if they had known about that. In that sense, her action is fraud by nonfeasance,” Kwon said. “As she has continued such acts, it is habitual fraud.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

More contracting fraud directed towards USFK:

Three South Korean companies have agreed to plead guilty and pay some $236 million in criminal and civil penalties for a “decade-long bid rigging conspiracy” involving contracts to supply fuel to U.S. military bases on the peninsula, the Justice Department said.

The companies — SK Energy Co. Ltd., GS Caltex Corp., and Hanjin Transportation Co. Ltd. — also agreed to pay a total of about $154 million to the United States for antitrust and false claims violations in separate civil claims, according to a statement.

The Justice Department said the criminal charges were the first to be announced in the investigation, which involved allegations that the petroleum and refinery companies and their agents conspired “to suppress and eliminate competition” during the bidding process for contracts from 2005 to 2016.

“Such a conspiracy is no less illegal for being hatched in South Korea, and as this case shows, federal law enforcement authorities can bridge the distance,” said Benjamin Glassman, U.S. attorney of the southern district of Ohio.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but does anyone think this is the only big rigging going on for USFK contracts?

I have been dubious of the viral Go Fund Me campaign for a homeless veteran that raised $400,000 last year and thus did not promote it on this site.  Sure enough it was a fraud:

Mr Bobbitt and the couple first came to prominence in November 2017 when Ms McClure launched a crowdfunding GoFundMe campaign, which, they said, was to re-pay the debt of a homeless man who came to her aid at the side of a road.

A photograph of Ms McClure and Mr Bobbitt, a veteran and drug addict who had lived on the streets for several years, standing on the side of the road, fronted the fundraising campaign.

More than 14,000 people donated, many inspired by the story’s details, such as Mr Bobbitt instructing Ms McClure to lock her car doors before he returned with a can of petrol.

Officials said on Thursday they believe the photo was staged after the three met previously when Ms McClure and Mr D’Amico visited a casino near an underpass where Mr Bobbitt spent time.  [BBC]

You can read the rest at the link, but they would have gotten away with this fraud if it wasn’t for the fact that Bobbitt sued McClure and D’Amico for more money than what they had given him.  This caused an investigation which led to the discovery of the fraud.

This fraud is exactly why I have never given any money to Go Fund Me and I am very particular on where I donate my money to.  I recommend everyone else should do so as well.

GIs have been dealing with shady landlords for decades, but in my opinion things have actually improved though it appears foreign students are now a bigger target:

International students here are increasingly falling victim to real estate-related fraud.

In one case, a Vietnamese student, 28, didn’t get her room deposit of 5 million won back because her landlord said she didn’t pay any monthly rent. But she claimed she paid six months’ rent in a lump sum but didn’t receive a receipt.

“The real estate procedure is complicated for international students,” one Chinese international student, surnamed Jing, told Dong-A Ilbo. “And it is harder to understand the jargon when they speak in Korean.”

Foreign students, now numbering 120,000 here, often fall victim to the fraud.

The paper cites four types. The first is a makeshift contract. Instead of a standard template contract, the landlords arbitrarily draw up one that does not protect the rights of foreign tenants.

The second is the cash transaction.

The third is the imposition of repair costs on the tenants. In the second and third cases, the landlord tries to take advantage of the foreign students’ inability to speak Korean or lack of related knowledge.

The fourth is a conflict when a student sublets a room to another tenant without a contract, which a landlord can use as an excuse to eject the tenants.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.