A South Korean court docket has handed a suspended jail time period to a civil servant who stole 1000’s of USD value of public funds to pay for crypto investments.
Per Yonhap, the general public official was handed a one-year suspended jail sentence, in addition to two years of probation.
The official was not named for authorized causes.
The person was accountable for finances expenditure at an administrative welfare heart within the metropolis of Ulsan, South Gyeongsang Province.
The court docket heard that the official siphoned off a complete of round $159,00 value of public funds from the middle over the course of 41 separate transfers.
And the court docket was advised that the official tried to cowl their traces by marking the embezzlement as “bills.”
On many events, big sums of cash had been written off as “stationary purchases” or “workplace provides.”
The official additionally wrote off embezzled cash as “safety funds” and “electrical energy invoice settlements.”
As an alternative, the court docket heard, the official spent “most” of the embezzled funds on crypto investments.
The court docket was advised the official had already “suffered big losses from investing in cryptocurrency” earlier than they started raiding public coffers.
The official embezzled the funds between June and December 2022.
Why Did ‘Crypto-keen’ South Korean Public Official Escape Jail Time?
Some media shops have advised the punishment was overly lenient, notably whereas the nationwide information remains to be being dominated by the Coin Gate scandal.
However the presiding decide defined their cause for the sentence, stating:
“[The court] has taken into consideration the truth that all of the embezzled cash was repaid to the native authorities. The court docket has additionally thought of the truth that the accused will probably lose their place, and the truth that the accused actively cooperated with the police and prosecution’s investigation into the matter.”
In October final yr, one other South Korean public official escaped overseas with $2.8 million worth of crypto.
Police imagine the cash was additionally embezzled from a public fund.
Final week, police arrested a suspected crypto scammer who allegedly posed as a civil servant to dupe victims out of fiat and crypto holdings.
