Editor's Pick: 'Successful Youth' Driving Luxury Cars... How They Built a Meticulous Money Laundering Ring

A luxury foreign sedan is parked on the side of the road.

Men loitering around the vehicle take out a white paper bag from the car and soon leave the scene.

What was inside the paper bag was a type of 'commission' received in exchange for their criminal activities.

They disguised themselves as a gift certificate business to 'launder' the proceeds of an overseas criminal organization into cash, collecting commissions in return.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's Financial Crime Investigation Division announced that they have arrested 11 members of the group, including the 30-year-old ringleader identified as 'A', and referred them to the prosecution while in custody.

[Lee Gye-hyung / Chief of Phishing Fraud Investigation Team 2, Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency: We have rounded up a domestic money laundering organization that had been meticulously laundering the criminal proceeds of overseas phishing rings by disguising themselves as gift certificate business operators.]

The group, consisting of individuals in their 20s and 30s, is accused of laundering 3.5 billion won in criminal proceeds from a Cambodian phishing organization between August and November of last year, while operating out of Songpa in Seoul and Seongnam in Gyeonggi Province.

The criminal operation was organized into five tiers: ringleader, director, withdrawal supervisor, withdrawal team leader, and withdrawal agent.

The lowest-level withdrawal agents would disguise themselves as gift certificate business operators to open business accounts and receive criminal proceeds from the Cambodian phishing organization.

Middle managers, including the director, withdrawal supervisor, and withdrawal team leader, would then withdraw the criminal proceeds as checks to purchase gift certificates, resell those certificates to convert them into cash, and finally purchase virtual assets such as Tether coins to send back to Cambodia.

In this process, they took a 15% commission from the funds laundered for the Cambodian organization. It was revealed that they laundered a total of 3.5 billion won and pocketed 861 million won in commissions.

The police have taken measures to freeze the commissions for pre-indictment forfeiture and plan to expand the investigation to include the Cambodian phishing organization.

Group Arrested for 'Money Laundering' of Criminal Proceeds While Disguised as Gift Certificate Business (June 18, 2026, D-Report)

Reported by Park Min-jun | Written by Lee Se-young | Video by Bae Moon-san | Video Editing by Park Na-young | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.