South Korean authorities have apprehended a crypto criminal after he was found guilty of disposing of a cigarette on the street. The alleged criminal, a 60-year-old fugitive who was behind a $13 million crypto scam, was caught because he dispossessed a cigarette in the street and tried to flee.
According to authorities, the South Korean has managed to stay hidden for five years, but his run ended after he was apprehended for fleeing after he committed the offense.
South Korean crypto criminal nabbed in Seoul
In their statement, the Seoul Metropolitan Police said they stopped the man on Wednesday in Gwanak District after he discarded a cigarette butt and tried to flee. When questioned, he refused to show his ID. He offered money to the officers and even pleaded, “let me go just this once,” while trying to hail a taxi. He then pretended to be on a phone call and tried to run again, but was arrested on the spot.
Not long after he was arrested, officers recognized the man, whom they identified only as A, was more than just careless with cigarettes. Investigators later found he was the mastermind of a 17.7 billion won ($13 million) crypto scam that duped about 1,300 people between 2018 and 2019. After the fraud, he vanished in 2020, but his run ended this week when he was handed over to the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office.
He was already a wanted fugitive with arrest warrants on 10 charges, including fraud and assault. This isn’t the first time a crypto scammer has been tripped up by a careless mistake. Back in 2012, James Zhong stole 50,000 bitcoins from the Silk Road. That would be worth more than $5.6 billion today.
Zhong was said to have stored the coins in physical wallets hidden around his house. In 2019, his home was burglarized, and when he called the police to report the theft, the IRS got involved. Investigators soon traced the assets back to the Silk Road hack, and it was over for Zhong. He was arrested and, in 2023, sentenced to just one year in prison.
