Two South Korean police officers have been indicted in connection with a $186 million cryptocurrency money laundering case.

PANews reported on November 28 that, according to Decrypt, a South Korean police chief and a senior police officer have been accused of accepting bribes from an illegal cryptocurrency exchange operator and participating in a $186 million (approximately 249.6 billion won) money laundering case involving voice fraud. Both have been dismissed from their posts and indicted.

Prosecutors allege that between July 2022 and February 2024, the two police officers received approximately $59,000 (79 million won) and $7,500 (10 million won) in cash and luxury goods, respectively, in exchange for providing investigative information, unfreezing accounts, introducing lawyers, and coordinating law enforcement resources to the criminal gang.

The criminal network converted funds obtained from voice scams into Tether (USDT) through an illegal cryptocurrency exchange masquerading as a gift certificate store. Prosecutors froze approximately $1.1 million (1.5 billion won) in illicit assets, including $600,000 (800 million won) in USDT, estimating the total proceeds of the crime at approximately $8.4 million (11.2 billion won).

Furthermore, similar cases are frequently reported globally. In July of this year, the anti-corruption agency in Karnataka, India, discovered that two police officers attempted to launder bribes using cryptocurrency; in March, senior officials of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were accused of misappropriating $21 million in cryptocurrency assets during an investigation of the cryptocurrency exchange Cryptoland.