By Cho Jae-hyon
City Editor

Two fraudsters were caught attempting to take over a Kosdaq-listed firm with two forged checks ― one with the face value of 15 billion won ($12 million) and the other 10 billion won, police said Sunday.

The two, identified as Kim and Park, both 45, met when they were in prison in May and agreed to ``a big project.’’ They bought the forged checks at the curb market in Myeongdong, central Seoul, deposited them with a firm handling legal documents, and received deposit certificates.

They approached another man who was interested in taking over the target company and agreed to jointly invest in it.

Providing the deposit certificates as collateral, they succeeded in signing a contract to buy management control of an unidentified Kosdaq firm for 16 billion won.

However, at the last minute, the joint investor became suspicious during the process of confirming the validity and asked a legal documentation handling firm to verify the authenticity of the checks.

The fraudsters were caught and put behind bars ― just two months after they had been released.

chojh@koreatimes.co.kr