570,000-Subscriber YouTuber Sentenced to 7 Years in Prison for Multi-Billion Won Used Car Loan Fraud and Extortion

▲ Court

A well-known YouTuber who created content exposing crimes has been sentenced to a heavy prison term in the first trial on charges of multi-billion won fraud and extortion.

According to the legal community on Sunday, the Seoul Central District Court sentenced a person surnamed A, who was indicted on charges including fraud, blackmail, and extortion under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes, to 7 years in prison.

A is the representative of a used car dealership and the operator of a YouTube channel with approximately 570,000 subscribers.

A is accused of taking out used car installment loans totaling about 3 billion won under the names of acquaintances in 2023, after deceiving lenders into believing that accident-involved vehicles—whose accident histories were not registered in computer systems—were normal vehicles.

These vehicles were involved in accidents ineligible for insurance payouts, such as drunk driving. Because the vehicle owners did not report the accidents to insurance companies, the incidents were not recorded in vehicle history inquiry systems.

In addition, A faces charges of securing more than 1.6 billion won in loans by falsely claiming to generate market margins through high-end imported car transactions, and running an unregistered car rental business for several years.

It was also revealed that A exploited the influence of their YouTube channel to extort more than 600 million won from victims who refused to pay or demanded their investment funds back, threatening them by saying, "I will upload a video exposing your criminal records."

The court found A guilty of all charges except for the charge related to the unregistered car rental business.

Regarding the sentencing, the court stated, "The defendant exploited loopholes in the loan system to inflict massive fraud damages exceeding 4.6 billion won," judging the nature of the crimes to be extremely grave.

However, the court added that it took into account favorable sentencing factors, such as the fact that the defendant confessed to some of the crimes and showed remorse.

(Photo: Yonhap News)

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