The Suwon High Court has sentenced six executives of V Global, a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange, to prison terms following a court hearing on December 26th.
According to reports from Economist.co.kr, two executives, Mr. Yang, and Mr. Oh were sentenced to eight and three years in prison, respectively, while the remaining four received three years in prison and five years of probation. However, they were not detained after pleading innocent to some charges against them.
V Global was a pyramid scheme disguised as a legitimate crypto trading platform that defrauded approximately 50,000 investors of $1.5 billion by promising a 300% return.
The investigation into the company began after some investors reported that they could not withdraw their tokens from the platform. The operators obstructed the investigation and destroyed evidence implicating them as masterminds of the scheme.
The judge stated:
“The defendants only trusted the VGlobal management team, evaded responsibility, and once the investigation began, they destroyed evidence and interfered with the investigation,”
The defendants pleaded guilty to the charges and were sentenced accordingly. Mr. Lee, the company’s CEO, has also been found guilty and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison in a previous trial.
Since 2018, the South Korean government has been planning to regulate digital asset and cryptocurrency sectors by requiring trading to be conducted through real-name bank accounts. However, at the time of this report, the government has yet to make these regulations official.
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