Lee Byung-gul, the chief executive officer of South Korea’s failed cryptocurrency exchange V Global, will serve 25 years in prison after his conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court of Korea on Friday. The court upheld an appeal court’s sentence on the CEO for operating a pyramid scheme between 2020 and 2021 that defrauded thousands of investors, local media reported.
See related article: Sam Bankman-Fried pleads not guilty to fraud charges in FTX exchange collapse
Fast facts
- Three other unnamed executives of V Global had their sentences of four to 14 years in prison upheld by the Supreme Court on the same day, according to the Yonhap News Agency.
- A spokeswoman at the Supreme Court said the full names of the convicted individuals were redacted in sentencing documents provided to authorized local media, citing protection of personal information. Forkast News has previously reported Lee’s full name after he was named in the conviction by a lower court.
- The lower court had ruled that the criminal proceeds from the pyramid scheme will not be confiscated, stating the difficulty in specifying the exact amount of money amassed by V Global. The Supreme Court upheld this decision, Newsis reported. The Supreme Court spokeswoman declined to comment on this when contacted by Forkast News.
- V Global defrauded about 50,000 investors of 2.8 trillion Korean won between July 2020 to April 2021 (now equivalent to US$2.26 billion), according to the court ruling reported by local…
