The South Korean prosecutor’s office announced the detention of three executives, including two CEOs of the cryptocurrency platform Haru Invest (not giving you a link for those fraudsters!). Yeah! This week is indeed rich in arrests of crypto criminals. 16,000 of Haru Invest might be a little happier. So, what are the facts?
Related: The Vacation in Montenegro Is Over: Ex-CFO Terraform Labs Extradited To South Korea
What Money We Talking About Here?
The Block reports that Haru Invest are accused of stealing cryptocurrencies worth 1.1 trillion Korean won (about $826 million at the time of writing), citing representatives of the Seoul South District Prosecutor’s Office.
And you know what’s funny about that? This is the citation from Hary X:
The leading digital asset management platform based on algorithmic trading strategies — Enjoy up to 12% earnings.
Really, people! They weren’t lying, that’s just not customers to enjoy the earnings of the strategies! (The joke is sponsored by SEC)
Now to the point!
You know what’s really funny, just two days before the arrest Hugo Lee posted an “update” without absolutely no update.
And this one probably was made by the prosecutor:
In January 2024, the prosecutor’s office issued an arrest warrant for one of the majority shareholders of B&S Holdings.
Subsequently, it turned out that the cryptocurrency platform Haru Invest misrepresented information about risks and offered clients to invest funds with a return of 12%.
The company said in a management statement that customer deposits were managed using “risk-free distributed investment techniques”. Common you people! Every investment is a risk. Even your veggies from a local supermarket… But Haru is “risk-free”. Meanwhile, this information was not true (HA-HA). Allegedly, the platform invested the majority of client funds through one person.
“We will find out the true nature of the crime during the investigation while doing everything we can to make amends and recover the funds,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement given to the Block.
OMG! What Happened?
In case you’re not up to speed, here’s a quick reminder of what triggered the investigation.
South Korean crypto asset management platform Haru Invest has suspended withdrawals and deposits, citing problems with service partners on the 13th of June, 2023.
On this exact day, Haru Invest accused operator B&S Holdings of submitting false reports and a related loss of $260 million.
Haru Invest’s Seoul office was already closed though. The head of the company, Lee Hyun-soo, attributed this to concerns for the safety of employees. According to him, the work was transferred to a remote format (With the transfer to prison in a year, oops).
Eunkwang Joo, co-founder and former CTO of the platform, admitted that what happened was an “internal situation.”
And local authorities be like:
So today we are here today (read the beginning of the article).
It’s great that this week, the defrauded investors got some justice. But in addition to relying on regulatory and law enforcement agencies, you also need to consider where you invest your assets. There are no risk-free assets. Although I’m lying, there is one, and it’s your crypto education!
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