Six executives implicated in South Korean cryptocurrency exchange V Global fraudvalued at 1.5 billion dollars (2 trillion won), have been sentenced to prison terms of up to eight years, although three of them were not detained so they could fight certain charges in court.
V Global operated between July 2020 and April 2021, attracting some 50,000 investors to the promise them 300% returns along with hefty payments for referring new customers.
According to a translation of December 26 reports by South Korean media outlets such as Economist.co.kr, two high-ranking executives, named Yang and Oh, were sentenced to eight and three years each for his role in defrauding investors.
Four other anonymous executives received three-year sentences and five years of probation..
However, three of the six have not yet been arrested, as they have pleaded not guilty to certain charges and have the right to defend themselves in court.
“The defendants only trusted the management team of VGlobal, evaded their responsibility and, once the investigation began, destroyed evidence and interfered with it“, declared the judge of the 12th Criminal Chamber of the Suwon District Court.
However, it was reported that the judge had granted some leniency to the defendants, as the actual amount of the fraud and the number of investors affected were less than initially thought last year.
According to Kyeongin’s information from February, this was because later tests showed that about 10,000 investors had actually made a profit from V Global through multi-level marketing incentive paymentsas bonuses for customer acquisition. Many would have reinvested those profits in the platform before its closure.
In June last year it was reported that the company had paid its customer referral bonusessupposedly worth $1,000 each, to existing investors through the influx of capital from new users, similar to a Ponzi scheme.
With this latest legal action, the number of V Global executives behind bars rises to sevengiven that the CEO, known as Mr. Lee, was sentenced to 22 years in prison in February.
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