Voice Phishing Cash Collector Acquittal | A Client Indicted as a Voice Phishing Cash Collector Is Acquitted with Daeryun's Assistance

The circumstances of Client A, who was indicted as a voice phishing cash collector, are as follows.

A is a head of household in his forties who, due to a chronic illness he had long suffered from, had experienced difficulty making a living for a long time.

The client, who had to support his family, registered his resume on a job search website.

Not long afterward, he received a contact regarding recruitment from a company.

The task assigned to A was a ‘real estate field survey’. A's role was to visit apartment sites, take photographs, and analyze the surrounding commercial district.

A did in fact perform this work diligently for several days. In the meantime, he was assigned an additional task by the company to collect an apartment down payment.

Because A had been performing legitimate field survey work for several days, he initially did not harbor any doubt about this additional task.

A then went to the location he had been instructed to in advance, received envelopes containing checks from certain individuals, and delivered them to yet other people.

After performing two additional tasks, A began to sense something strange. A's family also had doubts about this work.

While searching for various information on the Internet, A came to think that he might have been used as a voice phishing cash collector, and he immediately announced his intention to quit the company.

He then went straight to the police station and told the civil affairs investigator on duty at the time about his situation exactly as it was.

Subsequently, following reports by the victims, an investigation began, and A was tried without detention on a charge of fraud.

📌 Relevant Statutes

Article 13 of the Criminal Act (Intent)

An act performed through ignorance of the facts constituting the elements of a crime shall not be punishable. Provided, that this shall not apply where there is a special provision in the statutes.

Article 347 of the Criminal Act (Fraud)

A person who deceives another and thereby takes the delivery of property or obtains pecuniary advantage shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than ten years or by a fine not exceeding twenty million won.

📌 Relevant Precedent

“The intent to defraud, which is the subjective element of the crime of fraud, can, unless the defendant confesses, only be determined by comprehensively considering objective circumstances such as the defendant's financial capacity, environment, the content of the offense, and the course of performance of the transaction before and after the offense, and such intent may be established by conditional intent rather than definite intent; however, a finding of guilt must be based on evidence with probative value sufficient to lead a judge to a conviction, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the facts charged are true, and therefore, in the absence of such evidence, even if there is suspicion of the defendant's guilt, the matter can only be decided in the defendant's favor, and this is equally true in establishing the intent that is a subjective element of the crime of fraud.”(see Supreme Court Decision 2009Do11801, decided February 25, 2010, among others)

In order to protect the client, who was at risk of receiving a guilty verdict as a voice phishing cash collector, the attorneys of Daeryun Law Firm developed a detailed strategy.

In the trial relating to the voice phishing cash collector charge, the court acquitted A.

The court accepted most of the defense counsel's arguments.

The court first noted the point that A had actually conducted an apartment field survey at the direction of the company representative and then been paid an allowance, and that he used his own transit card during the course of his work without concealing his identity.

It also added the point that, even after being additionally directed to perform the check-delivery task, he resumed his original apartment field survey work immediately after completing that task.

The court then emphasized that, in light of A's age, social experience, and economic situation, there was considerable room to find that A, like the victims, had been deceived by the sophisticated methods of a voice phishing organization that pretended to recruit employees through an Internet job search website.