Unemployed Man in 30s Buys Apartment and Two Commercial Units Through Scalping

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A man in his 30s has been arrested by the police for selling scalped tickets, including reselling a 110,000-won BTS concert ticket for 3 million won. Over a period of eight years, he exclusively sold scalped tickets to purchase an apartment and two commercial spaces.

Reporter Lee Se-hyeon has the story.

[Reporter]

[At the time of his arrest last June: I folded the tickets. I folded the tickets, I did.]

A man in his 30s, identified as Mr. A, is arrested by the police last June.

Inside his home, multiple computers, smartphones, and admission tickets were discovered.

Mr. A is accused of purchasing and reselling about 9,000 popular tickets, such as idol performances, at a markup over a period of seven years and seven months starting in 2018.

After graduating from college, he continued only to sell scalped tickets, and the confirmed ticket sales alone amount to about 2.4 billion won.

Mr. A used the money earned from selling scalped tickets to purchase an apartment located in Gyeonggi Province and two commercial units in the same building.

The police identified 1.3 billion won in criminal proceeds, including these commercial units and deposit claims, and took measures to preserve them for confiscation.

He reaped exorbitant profits of up to nearly 30 times the original price, such as buying a 2019 BTS concert ticket for 110,000 won and reselling it for 3 million won, and buying Tottenham Hotspur's Korea tour football match tickets the year before last for 400,000 won and reselling them for 1.65 million won.

Mr. A, who had even registered as a business in the e-commerce sector and denied the crime by claiming, "I didn't know it was illegal and faithfully paid my taxes," was found to have search records on Gemini such as "how scalpers get caught by the police" and "whether it is difficult to prove charges without a search and seizure."

[Kim Jeong-hyeon / Head of Cyber Investigation Unit 2, Gyeonggi Bukbu Provincial Police Agency: Upon seeing media reports on (scalping crackdowns) around March, he stopped illegal sales. He closed his business and formatted all PCs and cell phones used in the crime to destroy evidence.]

Various data related to the crime were confirmed on a USB memory drive secured by the police through a search and seizure, and his nearly eight-year crime was finally caught.

(Photo courtesy of Gyeonggi Bukbu Provincial Police Agency)
(Reported by Joo Yong-jin, Video Editing by Park Ji-in, Design by Yeji)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.