Police have issued arrest warrants for 55 of the 73 South Korean online scam suspects repatriated from Cambodia. The group allegedly swindled 48.6 billion won from 869 victims through methods including no-show and deepfake romance scams. This repatriation represents the largest return of criminal suspects from a single country in national history.
The 73 South Korean online scam suspects repatriated from Cambodia arrived home last Friday, marking the nation's largest such operation from a single country. They landed in the southeastern port city of Busan, and police requested arrest warrants for 72 of them, excluding one with minor charges. As of 9 a.m. Monday, courts across the country had issued warrants for 55 suspects, according to the Korean National Police Agency's National Office of Investigation.
The group is accused of defrauding 869 South Korean victims of a combined 48.6 billion won (US$33.6 million). Among those arrested are 49 no-show scammers who impersonated civil servants to swindle 6.9 billion won from 194 victims. A couple was also detained for using deepfake technology in romance scams to defraud 104 people of 12 billion won.
The remaining 17 suspects, charged with romance scams that targeted about 30 victims for roughly 5 billion won, are scheduled to attend arrest warrant hearings in South Chungcheong Province on Monday afternoon. Earlier, a court granted a warrant for one individual accused of siphoning 19.4 billion won from 229 people by posing as a global financial company at a Cambodia-based call center until July last year.
This repatriation highlights intensified international cooperation against cross-border cybercrimes, with police vowing further investigations to aid victim compensation.
