A group of stock manipulators who drove up shares of listed company Youngpoong Paper roughly 14-fold in a single year using 444 brokerage accounts received prison terms and fines totaling nearly 3 trillion won ($2.2 billion).
The Seoul Southern District Court's 12th criminal division, presided over by Judge Park Jong-yeol, on the 30th sentenced the ringleader, surnamed Lee, to 15 years in prison and a fine of 397.3 billion won ($287 million), and ordered the forfeiture of 132.4 billion won ($95 million). Lee had been indicted on charges including violating the Capital Markets Act. An accomplice surnamed Yoon was sentenced to six years in prison and fined 397.3 billion won, with prison terms handed down to all 24 people indicted in the case. The fines imposed on them total 2.7255 trillion won ($1.97 billion).
The defendants were indicted on charges of artificially inflating Youngpoong Paper's share price from 2022 to 2023 by mobilizing about 20 members of a stock manipulation ring and 444 securities accounts. During that period, they placed roughly 230,000 manipulative orders. Prosecutors alleged the group reaped 789.8 billion won in illicit gains.
The court found that Lee had orchestrated the manipulation scheme overall, and rejected arguments that the scale of the crime had grown because of independent trading by some accomplices.
The court, however, ruled that some evidence had been unlawfully obtained and calculated the illicit gains based only on lawfully secured evidence. As a result, it recognized 132.4 billion won in illicit gains, less than the 789.8 billion won claimed by prosecutors.
"This is a serious crime that undermines sound trading based on supply and demand," the court said. "The degree of market distortion was substantial, with the share price soaring about 14-fold in a year, and investor losses were enormous as the price later plunged."
