A prominent real estate YouTuber with more than 100,000 subscribers has been arrested and referred to prosecutors on charges of defrauding investors of more than 10 billion won ($7.46 million).
The Bundang Police Station in Gyeonggi Province said Tuesday it had referred the suspect, identified only as A, a YouTuber in their 50s, to the Seongnam branch of the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office on charges including aggravated fraud under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes and violations of the Act on the Regulation of Similar Receiving Acts.
A had built a public profile through a real estate YouTube channel with more than 100,000 subscribers and appearances on television programs, and has operated a real estate auction hagwon for more than a decade.
Between January 2019 and July this year, A raised about 40 billion won from roughly 200 investors — many of them students at the hagwon — promising to generate returns through real estate auctions via a fund A operated, and pledging to repay both principal and guaranteed profits.
The promised auction investments never generated returns from the outset. In practice, A was paying earlier investors with money collected from new ones — a classic Ponzi scheme. Some early investors did receive payouts, but as new investment dried up this year, A could no longer meet those obligations.
Investors who stopped receiving payments filed complaints against A. A total of 126 victims have submitted complaints so far, with unrecovered losses totaling 12.5 billion won. Some individuals are believed to have lost more than 500 million won.
A is reported to have admitted to the charges.
"We have calculated A's criminal proceeds at approximately 8.2 billion won and applied for a preservation order for forfeiture," a police official said, adding that investigators are also looking into whether staff at the hagwon and related corporate entities were involved in the scheme.
paq@heraldcorp.com
