Svmuu News: In South Korea today, a first-instance verdict was handed down in a case involving the fraudulent and improper trading provisions of the Virtual Asset User Protection Act. The Seoul Southern District Court sentenced a cryptocurrency influencer surnamed Park, who masterminded a “rug pull” scam involving a meme coin, to four years in prison, while two other accomplices were sentenced to 2 years and 6 months, and 3 years in prison with a 5-year suspended sentence, respectively.
Prosecutors noted that the defendants issued the meme coin through Pump.fun and used social media to spread false positive information, such as “lock-up announcements,” driving the coin’s price up approximately 1,001-fold within 26 hours and luring about 6,000 investors to buy in, before dumping the tokens to cash out. The group invested only about 10 million won in operational costs and reaped illegal profits of approximately 400 million won. (Edaily)