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Wealthy Golfers Targeted in $850K Rigged Casino Scheme

Twelve members of a sophisticated criminal organization that used manipulated casino games and extortion schemes to defraud wealthy people out of the equivalent of US$850K while luring them on golf vacations abroad have been caught by South Korean authorities.

The group's 60-year-old head, known only as "Mr. A" by the Gyeonggi Southern Police Agency's International Crime Investigation Unit, was one of those arrested.

According to investigators, the scam started in November 2022 when Mr. A made friends with a prosperous businessman at a golf networking event.  According to court documents, Mr. A. secretly fitted the businessman's vehicle with a GPS tracker.

As part of a "hole-in-one celebration," Mr. A. informed the unwary victim that he had won a fully-funded golf trip to Thailand.

Plot of Sextortion

Once there, the group encouraged the victim to perform actions with a sex professional while playing golf.  According to authorities, they later claimed that the sex worker was underage and requested ₩240 million (US$172K) to resolve the issue.

At least five additional wealthy victims were allegedly targeted by the organization between mid-2023 and mid-2024; they were all met at golf driving ranges.

The victims were enticed to play at casinos with rigged games after being enticed overseas once more with promises of special golfing experiences, this time to Cambodia.  Police claim that crooked casino employees and syndicate members made sure they lost a lot of money.

To induce a victim to pay up, the group once staged a fictitious kidnapping and claimed that his associate was being kept against their will at the casino.  In a single transaction, the scam took ₩680 million (US$490K) from the victim.

The overall amount of extortion across all cases was close to ₩1.19 billion, or around US$850,000.

"Setup Crimes"

Law enforcement also discovered connections to a casino insider who assisted in carrying out the scam and the use of GPS surveillance to coerce victims during their investigation.

One of the accused, a South Korean national in charge of coordination abroad, is still at large.  In order to facilitate his extradition to Korea, authorities have declared his passport void and asked for an Interpol Red Notice.

"We consider the crimes by Mr. A’s organization to be the classic form of a ‘setup crime,’ in which innocent people are made to appear as criminals in order to extort money,” Gyeonggi police said in a statement.

They cautioned that these kinds of crimes can be especially successful since victims are deterred from seeking assistance by their fear of prosecution.

“Demanding money by invoking the possibility of criminal prosecution is clearly extortion –do not comply and report it immediately,” they added.