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A group has been apprehended by police for illegally obtaining dozens of apartments across the country through the special housing supply program for people with disabilities by stealing the identities of the hearing impaired. They resold the apartments at high prices to pocket the profits, maintaining a 100% success rate in their housing subscription applications.

Reporter Lee Se-hyeon has the story.

[Reporter]

Two people, guided by a man, get into a car.

This is footage of a broker, identified as A, taking hearing-impaired individuals who agreed to lend their names in exchange for money to apply for housing subscriptions.

They targeted the special supply quota for people with disabilities. Broker A even succeeded in winning a subscription for an apartment in Gangnam, Seoul, which had an overall competition rate of 84 to 1 for special supply units.

The 84-square-meter apartment had a sale price of 2.2 billion won in February last year, and the asking price has now risen to 4 billion won.

[Real Estate Agent in the Area: It is a popular unit size, after all. It is like winning the lottery.]

Over the past five years, Broker A and his accomplices illegally obtained 30 apartments through the special supply program for people with disabilities in various regions, including Seoul and Busan.

Their subscription success rate was 100%. To increase their chances, they specifically targeted individuals with severe hearing impairments, paying them up to 20 million won to borrow their names.

Police investigations revealed that most of the down payments were covered by loans taken out in the names of the hearing-impaired individuals, and the group resold the housing rights with premiums of up to 100 million won.

For apartment complexes where resale was restricted for a certain period, they waited until the restriction period ended to resell the properties and secure their profits.

[Park Da-jeong, Superintendent/Head of Anti-Corruption Crime Investigation Team 2, Gyeonggi Bukbu Provincial Police Agency: It appears that detection was difficult because they used a method of personally accompanying the individuals with disabilities to apply for the subscriptions to avoid scrutiny.]

The police have referred Broker A, three recruiters, and 36 hearing-impaired individuals who lent their names to the prosecution for violations of the Housing Act. They have also requested the forfeiture and preservation of the housing rights owned by the group and 470 million won in criminal proceeds.

(Video Editing: Jung Yong-hwa, VJ: Kim Hyung-jin, Design: Park Tae-young, Footage courtesy of Gyeonggi Bukbu Provincial Police Agency)

Reported by Lee Se-hyeon | Video by Jung Yong-hwa | VJ by Kim Hyung-jin | Graphics by Park Tae-young | Produced by SBS Digital News