USFK Korean Civilian Employee Sentenced to 5 Years for Job Scam
It is good this guy was caught and sentenced, but how stupid and gullible are the victims to fall for this scam?:
A former Camp Stanley employee has been sentenced to five years in prison for fraud and related charges after selling nonexistent base jobs to more than two dozen South Koreans.
The employee, surnamed Gang, worked more than 20 years in the Uijeongbu-area base, most recently as an ambulance driver, before being fired in March over the allegations.
Gang used a U.S. soldier who was unaware of the scam to interview Koreans by phone to test their English, South Korean police said. More than 30 victims paid him a total of $750,000 for the fake jobs over six and a half years, according to sentencing documents from the Anyang branch of the Suwon District Court.
Gang was also convicted of counterfeiting documents and circulating forged documents. He wrote 11 false letters of employment, using a computer at a U.S. military medical facility in Uijeongbu to produce at least one of the letters.
Among his victims was a woman who paid Gang 25 million won (almost $21,500) in 2013, believing she was securing a civilian job for her son with U.S. Forces Korea. Another woman, police said, paid Gang 100 million won (about $86,000) for administrative jobs for her husband, son and daughter. Gang promised some of his victims he would pay the human resources manager at an Army hospital, and their jobs would be guaranteed until retirement at age 68. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the rest at the link.
Desperate people are often quite gullible… 🙁
setnaffa: “Desperate people are often quite gullible…”
I don’t think I have to point out the obvious here. LOL
#2
You mean like the people who hand over their life savings to scoundrels for the promise of a place in paradise?
OTOH, those who feel the need to troll the Interwebs while wearing shiny belts and defending statists are just fine, eh?
Sometimes it’s “The Korean Way.” I never quite understood how the Key Money thing worked. You give someone a huge amount of money, move into an apartment, live there for a few years, then move out and get ALL your money back. How do you know they won’t skip out on you, or rent you an apartment they don’t really control?
But it seems to work.
So, paying a big, fat bribe to get a job with perminant security and a retirement check? Weird, but not entirely out of the realms of possibility.
MTB, there are occasionally folks who skip out with the key money; but they’re essentially disgraced and can’t come back to their families. It’s a bigger thing with Koreans than most Westerners.
And there is a long history of payola in all government jobs… Not strictly a Korean thing…
USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teapot_Dome_scandal
England: http://sunnewsonline.com/new/job-for-sale-scandal-we-paid-n250000-each-for-govt-jobs-victims/
India: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indian-bribe-scandal-takes-a-dark-turn-as-witnesses-and-suspects-die/2015/07/05/f643406e-8fd4-4158-8984-88d243dd1ea1_story.html
And I’m sure we could find it anywhere there are “safe” and/or “well-paid” government or private sector jobs.
Stuck in moderation… 🙁
“I never quite understood how the Key Money thing worked. You give someone a huge amount of money, move into an apartment, live there for a few years, then move out and get ALL your money back. How do you know they won’t skip out on you, or rent you an apartment they don’t really control?”
Reputable real estate offices will do the equivalent of a title search (what they do in the US) and make sure the person putting a place up for rent is the actual owner. As far as owners skipping out – that happens all the time. Sometimes they are just flat out ripping the tenant off. Other times they’ve lost money in other investments or got way over their head in debt and when it comes time to pay the key money back – they don’t have it.
It’s a common story – just google for it. What really sucks is if you are a foreigner and they know you’re leaving country soon. Because then it just becomes a waiting game.
A Korean friend lost her key money and didn’t know until a bank representative showed up at their apartment. He said the own withdrew all his accounts and fled. Now the bank owned the property and was offering the tenants 10% of their losses.
Chamberlain had a contract for peace in Europe from “Herr Hitler” in consideration of surrendering Czechoslovakia. Contracts are only valid between honest people.