[Anchor]

The Financial Supervisory Service has developed a system using AI to track illegal usurers. By connecting groups that use the same bank accounts or phone numbers to create a sort of map, 3,400 organizations have fallen into the monitoring net.

Reporter Min Gyeongho has the details.

[Reporter]

In July, Mr. A, a man in his 40s, saw a loan advertisement text message that he would normally have deleted, contacted the sender, and borrowed 300,000 won.

It was because he was short on living expenses.

[Illegal Debt Collection Victim: They said they would do it right away. Two or three weeks later, they told me to pay a certain amount... about 480,000 won...]

However, when he failed to repay within the deadline, they slapped him with a late fee of 50,000 won per day, swelling the debt to 800,000 won.

The late fee exceeded the principal amount.

After receiving advice from the Financial Supervisory Service that it was illegal and he no longer needed to pay, Mr. A stopped sending money to the lending agency.

That was when the threats and harassment began.

[Illegal Debt Collection Victim: My wife and other family members all started getting contacted. Sexual text messages were sent. My son didn't even know what was in them... He's a first grader (in elementary school), a first grader.]

Because they use Telegram with servers overseas, reporting to the police has been of little use.

However, the Financial Supervisory Service has developed an investigation support system that analyzes these rings using artificial intelligence.

If information such as account numbers or mobile phone numbers used in crimes appears three or more times across different accounts, the system considers them to be related organizations and creates a map of sorts.

[Kim Yu-hong / Senior Investigator, Financial Consumer Protection Bureau, Financial Supervisory Service: When the same messenger and phone number are mentioned in a single victim report, a line is formed connecting them.]

This is the record of the Telegram account that contacted Mr. A, who suffered from debt collection damages, submitted to the Financial Supervisory Service.

Tracing this record reveals which groups appear, and taking a closer look at these groups shows that they were part of a larger organization.

As a result, some 3,400 organizations have been identified.

This means that catching a single syndicate member will make it possible to track the entire organization and other related groups, much like pulling up sweet potatoes by their vines.

The Financial Supervisory Service stated that with the law changing to allow direct investigations starting in January next year, it will actively utilize this system for investigations and share the technique with other investigative agencies such as the police.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
(Reported by Min Gyeongho | Video by Lim Woo-sik | Video Editing by Jang Hyun-ki)