A law firm operator in South Korea has been imprisoned in Busan on March 11 after being found guilty of misappropriating clients’ funds to invest in cryptocurrencies.
According to Newsis, the case was tried at the Criminal Division of the Busan District Court, where an unnamed individual in their 50s was sentenced to 20 months in jail.
The lawyer allegedly embezzled $170,000 on December 27, 2021, by transferring funds from a company account to their personal bank account, which had been entrusted by a corporate client for a real estate transaction as part of a trust agreement.
However, instead of fulfilling the trust, the accused diverted the money for personal use, specifically investing it in cryptocurrencies. Additionally, the court noted another incident where the law firm chief misappropriated a registration fee worth nearly $1,700 from a private client.
Despite the crypto investments, which turned out to be unsuccessful, prosecutors were unable to recover any of the stolen funds.
Justice Jeong Soon-yeol of the District Court’s 11th Criminal Division, who presided over the case, emphasised the significant financial loss incurred and the failure to retrieve the stolen money, leading to the imposition of a severe penalty.
This incident adds to the growing trend of crypto-related crimes in South Korea’s Busan region. In December of the previous year, authorities apprehended over 80 suspected crypto scammers in the city. In January, the same court division sentenced a drug dealer, who utilised cryptocurrencies for transactions, to seven years in prison. Additionally, in nearby Changwon, a district court sentenced an individual to four years in prison for providing false bank documents to a fraudulent crypto exchange.