Wonju Attorney Referral | Wonju Attorney Who Assisted a Client Facing Fraud Charges and Concluded the Case With a Non-Prosecution Decision

Fraud is a crime in which a person deceives another to obtain property or acquire a pecuniary benefit.

The sentence for the crime of fraud is set out in the Criminal Act.

Under the Criminal Act, the crime of fraud is punishable by imprisonment for up to 10 years or a fine of up to 20 million won. However, if the amount of gain is 500 million won or more, aggravated punishment applies pursuant to the Act on Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes.

An important element for the establishment of 🔗the crime of fraud is the “act of deception.”

The crime is committed when the act of deceiving the other party causes that party to fall into a mistaken belief, when financial harm results so that an intent of unlawful acquisition appears, and when there is intent or purpose.

The attorney argued that there had been no act of fraud.

The client had recently lost employment and was preparing to start a self-owned business.

In the meantime, the client came to need a substantial sum, and the complainant, who was the client's romantic partner, readily handed over the funds, telling the client to use them to help cover the shortfall.

For an act of fraud to be established, there must be an act of deception as to the intent to repay or the ability to repay.

The attorney emphasized that the client and the complainant were partners seeing each other on the premise of marriage, and that the client had purely received help in the course of planning a future together, emphasizing that there had been no act of deception.

The attorney argued that the funds the complainant had handed to the client were not a loan but a gift.

This is because whether the crime of fraud is established differs depending on whether the funds were a gift or a loan.

Under the Civil Act, a gift takes effect when one party expresses the intent to gratuitously confer property on the other party and the other party accepts it.

In other words, because the property is conferred gratuitously, the recipient of the property has no obligation to return or repay it.

To prove that the client had never said anything like “lend me money” or “I will pay it back,” the attorney submitted text messages and recordings from the relevant period as evidence.

The attorney also submitted as evidence a text message in which the complainant told the client, who was hesitant to receive such a large sum, “Don’t worry. I am not taking this money back from you. Don’t worry and use it for what you need.”