SEOUL: A Telegram crime ring that sexually exploited over 234 individuals, including 159 minors, since 2020 has been busted by the police in Seoul, in what is believed to be one of the largest digital sex crime cases in the country, officials said on Thursday (Jan 23).
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s Cybercrime Investigation Unit has arrested 14 members of the ring, including the 33-year-old man who allegedly formed the group in May 2020 and led its network of sexual exploitation in hundreds of encrypted chatrooms on Telegram.
“The 14 include the ringleader who went by the nickname ‘pastor’ and was arrested on Jan 14,” the agency’s official Oh Kyu-shik told a press briefing.
According to investigators, an additional 73 people have been identified in relation to the crimes. They provided fake pornographic content of acquaintances using deepfake technology. Forty of them are under criminal investigation, one has been arrested and the authorities are tracking down the rest.
Of the 234 victims throughout the group’s four years in operation, 159 have been identified as teenagers – 57 male and 102 female.
Ten of the teen victims were raped, filmed and subject to other forms of cruelty by the ringleader, the police explained. Unlike most sex crimes that target a specific age group or gender, the group’s crimes were against random victims of various groups, they added.
Calling themselves “the vigilantes” and operating in a hierarchy, the group encouraged members to seek promotion by finding new victims, or creating and distributing sexually exploitative content.
Their method involved acquiring personal information about the victims after approaching them on Telegram, threatening to distribute the information if they did not comply with the perpetrator’s instructions. The victims were subject to gaslighting and threats of sexually exploitative punishments.
The leader of the group is said to have come up with the nickname of “pastor” from a character in the popular Netflix drama Narco-Saints.
The case is similar to a case widely known as the “Nth room” in which 73 women were lured via Telegram and then subjected to various acts of sexual abuse between May 2019 and February 2020. Its mastermind, Cho Joo-bin, whose nickname was “Doctor,” is currently serving a 42-year jail term. - The Korea Herald/ANN
