A woman in her 60s who had arranged to meet over a gift certificate transaction was found dead in a cafe's freezer storage room, where police also discovered counterfeit department store gift certificates with a face value in the tens of billions of won.
Police said on the 8th that the cafe's owner, a man in his 30s identified only as A, has been arrested and is under investigation on charges of murdering a person he lured. A missing-person report for the woman, identified as B, was filed in Seoul's Yeongdeungpo district at around midnight on the 4th. After tracking her mobile phone, police found her body at about 2:36 p.m. the same day in the freezer storage room of a cafe in Munsan, Paju.
The body was frozen near the entrance to the storage room. Police arrested A in Yeongdeungpo at about 2:31 p.m., five minutes before the body was found, and the Goyang branch of the Uijeongbu District Court issued an arrest warrant on the 6th.
The two are believed to have met for the first time at the cafe at about 11 a.m. on the 3rd. B reportedly visited to discuss a transaction with A, who ran a business converting gift certificates into cash, a practice known in Korea as sangpumgwon-kkang. Security camera footage inside the cafe showed B entering the freezer storage room with A, and A emerging alone.
The counterfeit department store gift certificates found in the storage room had a combined face value in the tens of billions of won. Police suspect that A, a gift certificate broker, committed the crime after being caught trying to sell the forged certificates.
Investigators also found signs that A had planned the crime in advance. A had posted a notice that the cafe would close for a single day on the 3rd, the day he was to meet B, citing internal store matters, and would resume normal operations the following day.
A appeared to have intended to keep the cafe running until police found the body in the freezer storage room. Had that happened, B's body would likely have been left in the freezer. After police found the body on the 4th, an additional notice appeared at the cafe saying it would be closed for an extended period from the 5th through the end of October. A has admitted to the charges in questioning, according to police.
Police have requested an autopsy and are expanding the investigation to determine the origin and distribution channels of the counterfeit certificates, whether accomplices were involved, and the motive for the crime.
