Thai authorities have busted a $15 million criminal enterprise that victimized over 870 South Koreans, in what one expert calls a case study of “multi-layered laundering.”
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Economic Crime Investigation Division announced Monday the arrest of 25 members of “Lungo Company,” a fraud ring that deployed multiple scam tactics, including romance schemes, crypto fraud, and fake lottery compensation offers.
Thai police separately detained the ringleader and eight core members, who remain in custody pending extradition to South Korea, according to a local media report.
“Unlike previous crime rings that usually relied on a single method, this group used multiple tactics in a systematic way,” a police official said.
Victims were reportedly manipulated into depositing money on fake platforms or purchasing worthless crypto under the guise of compensation for data breaches.
Cybercrime consultant David Sehyeon Baek told Decrypt, the group would leverage “extensive OTC broker networks operating throughout Thailand, particularly in tourist areas like Pattaya,” noting these unlicensed operations “facilitate crypto-to-fiat conversions while bypassing traditional banking oversight.”
The Lungo Company likely employed chain-hopping tactics, he said, “rapidly swapping funds across different blockchains to obscure transaction trails” by converting various crypto across multiple networks.
“Cross-chain crime has surged globally, tripling in the past two years,” as decentralized exchanges, cross-chain bridges, and no-KYC coin swap services enable rapid anonymous transfers, Baek said.
That effectively forces “investigators to spend countless hours manually tracing funds across multiple protocols.”
The organization would exploit nested services—unauthorized trading operations within regulated exchanges that allow clients to trade “while hiding any connection to the underlying regulated infrastructure,” Baek noted.
“Technically, these schemes involve shell companies opening accounts across multiple major exchanges using fraudulent credentials, then offering custom interfaces that allow clients to trade while hiding any connection to the underlying regulated infrastructure,” he added.
These “parasite exchanges” process nearly “100 times more illicit volume than their mainstream host platforms,” the expert said, and charge premium fees, typically between “7% and 15%,” in exchange for anonymity.
Baek said additional techniques likely included crypto-funded prepaid cards for ATM withdrawals, casino laundering to produce “clean” winnings, and micro-transactions split into thousands of transfers to stay “below detection thresholds.”
For final cash-out, the expert said the network almost certainly turned to unregulated OTC brokers in Thailand and neighboring jurisdictions, providing “high-volume cash-out with minimal scrutiny,” and likely coordinated via encrypted apps like “Telegram and WeChat.”
Just last month, Seoul police dismantled an international hacking ring that stole $28.1 million from South Korea’s wealthiest individuals, including BTS member Jungkook and top business executives, after breaching their financial and crypto accounts.
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