AAFES Employees are Arrested in Blackmarket Scam

Here is something that is no shocker to those of us who have spent plenty of time in USFK:

One man is in custody and three more face charges in connection with a black-marketing operation that was being run out of an Army and Air Force Exchange Service store at Camp Long, near Wonju, South Korea, authorities said Wednesday.

The case was a result of a yearlong investigation and involved more than 21,000 cases of beer from AAFES, according to Kim Jong-mu, a Seoul-based South Korean customs officer who is the case’s senior investigator.

The duty-free beer was driven off base in a U.S. government vehicle and sold to middlemen, who in turn resold it on the South Korean market, he said.

The four suspects in the case were AAFES employees, he said.

AAFES employees are really the brains behind the black marketing scams in Korea. Here is how these criminals have been pulling off their scam:

The 21,300 cases of beer believed to have been smuggled over the past year was valued at 700 million won, or about $750,000. Kim said investigators believe the suspects have been involved in black marketing for many years.

The Camp Long smuggling was done by loading cases into a vehicle with USFK plates and driving the beer to a middleman waiting off base in an identical vehicle with South Korean license plates, Kim said. Then the plates were switched and the beer was delivered to liquor merchants in Seoul’s Namdaemun Market, he said.

They black marketed $750,000 in just beer, imagine how much they are making from Spam, ox tails, and other popular food items as well. I’m willing to be their black marketing ring was bringing in close to $1 million a year and they have been getting away with this for years. This is a huge amount of money and this is just from Camp Long.