SEOUL – A South Korean court has handed down a three-year prison sentence to the CEO of a major local cryptocurrency exchange, Kim Min-ho (pseudonym), after finding him guilty of market manipulation and fraud. The ruling, delivered by the Seoul Southern District Court on Monday, marks one of the strictest penalties issued against a top executive in the country’s digital asset sector to date.
Kim, the former head of the now-defunct KryptoFlow Exchange, was convicted on charges related to artificially inflating the trading volume and market price of several proprietary altcoins listed on his platform between 2021 and 2022. Prosecutors successfully argued that Kim orchestrated a systematic wash trading scheme, misleading retail investors into believing the tokens had high liquidity and genuine market interest.
The court emphasized the severity of the offense, stating that Kim’s actions not only caused substantial financial losses to ordinary investors but also severely damaged the overall integrity and trust in the nascent Korean digital asset market. The prosecution had initially sought a five-year term, citing the massive scale of the illicit profits generated from the manipulation.
Legal representatives for the convicted CEO indicated they plan to appeal the sentence. Despite the appeal, South Korea’s financial regulators and prosecution services have signaled a continuing crackdown on manipulative practices, reinforcing regulatory oversight across domestic crypto trading platforms.
Source: South Korean crypto CEO gets 3-year prison term in market manipulation case: report
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