In July, a man in his 40s, surnamed A, responded to a loan advertisement text message he normally would have deleted and borrowed 300,000 won.

It was because he was short on living expenses.

[Illegal Collection Victim: They said they would process it right away. They told me to pay back a certain amount after two or three weeks, which came out to about 480,000 won....]

However, when he failed to repay it by the deadline, they slapped him with a 50,000 won daily late fee, swelling the debt to 800,000 won.

The late fee had grown larger than the principal.

Upon receiving advice from the Financial Supervisory Service that illegal lenders had no right to demand further repayment, A stopped sending money to the lending agency.

That was when threats and harassment began.

[Illegal Collection Victim: They started contacting my wife and all my family members. They sent sexual text messages. My son didn't even know what those messages meant.... He's in the first grade (of elementary school), first grade.]

Because they used Telegram, which has servers overseas, filing a police report was of no use.

However, the Financial Supervisory Service has developed an investigative support system that analyzes these crime 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 identifies them as interconnected networks and creates a kind of map.

[Kim Yu-hong / Senior Investigator, Financial Supervisory Service: When the same messenger handles and phone numbers are mentioned in a single victim report, a connection line is formed accordingly.]

This is the record of the Telegram account that contacted A, who suffered from debt collection harassment, as received by the Financial Supervisory Service.

Tracing these records reveals specific groups, and taking a closer look at these groups shows 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 allows investigators to track down the entire organization and even other connected rings, much like pulling up a bunch of sweet potatoes by their stems.

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

3,400 Loan Shark Rings Linked One After Another... AI Creates 'Map' (SBS 8 News, Nov. 1, 2026)

(Reported by Min Kyeong-ho | Produced by Choi Yoon-seo | Camera Filming by Lim Woo-sik | Video Editing by Jang Hyun-ki | Production: SBS Digital News)