Seoul Police Recover $19M in Frozen Voice Phishing Proceeds

Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's investigation into voice phishing has led to a significant breakthrough. The police have successfully returned over $18.9 million that had been frozen at domestic cryptocurrency exchanges to its rightful owners.

The refund, totaling approximately 26.3 billion won, was made possible through the cooperation of domestic crypto exchanges and three years of investigative tracing by the Metropolitan Investigation Unit.

The funds were initially frozen in accounts at the country's five largest crypto exchanges from 2017 to August last year without being returned. However, as financial institutions tightened their response to voice phishing, phishing rings began routing money through crypto exchanges instead.

Police identified victims by tracing funds across 1,050 digital wallets at crypto exchanges and 163,000 bank accounts. The information was then shared with the exchanges, and the refund process was initiated, returning 26.37 billion won to 1,137 victims as of this month.