Employee Gets 5-Year Prison Term for Stealing $2.8 Million from Company to Buy Crypto

A South Korean employee who stole more than $2.8 million from his company to purchase cryptocurrency was given a five-year prison sentence.

According to a report by Yonhap, the employee, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was found guilty of counts of embezzling money from the business by the criminal division of the Daegu District Court (also unnamed). The company manufactures medical equipment products, and the guilty worker was a man in his 30s. The individual was identified as a manager who oversaw the company's accounting division.

According to testimony given in court, the employee embezzled money 57 times for a total of little over $2.8 million. The man paid a bill once by transferring $21,000 to his wife's account.

Employee stole $2.8 million from the company's salary fund to purchase cryptocurrency

The individual seems to have had "freedom" to use the company's accounts and appeared to be in charge of overseeing employee payrolls. According to testimony given in court, the man invested the money in "cryptocurrencies as well as stocks."

However, the individual also appeared to have made some dubious cryptocurrency purchases with his stolen riches, according to the court, as he had previously declared bankruptcy.

In March of this year, after the company started to believe something was fishy, police intervened to take the man into custody and reported their suspicions to the neighborhood police station.

Officers looked into the matter and discovered proof that the individual had been stealing from the business for at least a year.

The individual had since "paid back" some of the money he had stolen and "showed regret," the presiding judge was reported as saying. The guy should serve five years in prison, the court added, because of the "nature of the offences" he had done and the fact that he had betrayed the confidence of his employer and coworkers.

A court in Seoul also handed down a five-year prison term to a cryptocurrency fraudster last month after he defrauded victims out of about $1.7 million in bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), and cash.