The Financial Supervisory Service's headquarters in Seoul / Korea Times file
Illegal personal finance influencers are increasingly resorting to sophisticated online impersonation tactics to swindle retirement-age investors, according to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), Tuesday.
Cases uncovered this year through the watchdog’s new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered monitoring system show that investors in their 50s and 60s, who are less adept at navigating digital environments, have emerged as the primary targets of these evolving scams.
Of the 17 cases reported to the FSS between January and April, 12 involved victims from those age groups. Many were persuaded to pour retirement savings into fraudulent schemes, suffering substantial losses averaging 180 million won ($122,000) per person.
Authorities identified three major tactics behind the scams.
The most prevalent involved fraudsters posing as established financial influencers. Scammers copied profile images, logos and existing content from legitimate channels to create convincing fakes, then used doctored videos to funnel viewers into illegal stock chatrooms.
Others masqueraded as licensed financial institutions, building counterfeit websites with stolen corporate identities or promoting investment opportunities falsely presented as projects affiliated with reputable firms, only to abscond with investors’ money.
Some operators took an even more deceptive route by acquiring unrelated but popular YouTube channels with large followings and rebranding them into seemingly credible stock investment platforms.
The latest investigation follows the FSS’ transition from manual oversight to an AI-based real-time surveillance system.
The system automatically flags newly uploaded content from monitored channels, extracts audio and subtitle data and evaluates potential legal violations, enabling authorities to respond more swiftly through administrative measures or criminal referrals.
Source: Korea Times News
