A Seoul court has acquitted Korean influencer Park, age 45 and known as "Coin King Jonber Kim," of charges related to a $253 million cryptocurrency scam on October 15. Prosecutors had sought a 20-year prison sentence and the seizure of over $14 million from Park's assets.
Prosecutors alleged that Park masterminded the issuance of two digital tokens, Podo coin and ATube, and manipulated their values through false promises to investors. According to prosecutors, these schemes allowed Park to siphon $253 million from investors.
The Seoul Southern District Court ruled that prosecutors failed to establish a direct causal link between Park's actions and changes in coin prices. While the court acknowledged that offering fake proposals in white paper documents was deceptive, it determined that white papers alone could not be proven to have prompted purchases of the digital currencies.
The court noted that some victims purchased tokens based on blogs, YouTube videos, community discussions, or recommendations from acquaintances rather than white papers or materials produced by the defendants. In other cases, the purchasing circumstances were not clearly documented.
The acquittal follows heightened enforcement efforts in South Korea. In August, the same court sentenced Jeong Sang-ho, former CEO of the insolvent digital asset bank Delio, to 15 years in prison for embezzling $49.2 million in customer assets. South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service has also deployed AI technology to detect cryptocurrency price manipulation schemes across major domestic crypto exchanges.
