The CEO of a Cryptocurrency Company in South Korea Was Sentenced to Three Years in Prison for Market Manipulation

BlockBeats News, February 4th. According to the Korean Economic Daily, a South Korean court has sentenced a cryptocurrency management company CEO, Jong-hwan Lee, to three years in prison for manipulating cryptocurrency prices to gain undue profits. This case is the first ruling under the "Virtual Assets User Protection Act," which came into effect in July 2024. The court also fined Jong-hwan Lee 500 million Korean Won (about $343,900) and confiscated approximately 846 million Korean Won (about $582,000) of his illegal gains. However, due to his good behavior during the trial, the court decided not to detain him before the final judgment.

Reportedly, between July 22nd and October 25th, 2024, Jong-hwan Lee used an automated trading program to inflate trading volume and executed wash trading orders multiple times to manipulate the price of the ACE cryptocurrency, allegedly earning about 7.1 billion Korean Won (about $48,800) illegally. Prior to using this program, the average daily trading volume of the relevant cryptocurrency was around 160,000 units, which surged to 2.45 million units the next day.