Police said Monday they had arrested four people on charges of murdering an employee of an insurance company in order to illegally receive insurance money of 10 billion won.
Those arrested include a 26-year-old jobless man, who was identified only by his surname Jin, and two of his high school alumni, the Namyangju Police Station in Gyeonggi Province announced.
A 38-year-old man, Yeom, who allegedly masterminded the murder, committed suicide by jumping from an apartment building where he lived, a spokesman said.
They kidnapped an insurance company employee, 38, in Namyangju on Jan. 26, taped her body up and put her in the cargo box of a truck. She was suffocated to death and her body was abandoned in Iksan, North Jeolla Province, the spokesman said.
In November last year, Yeom had the insurance company employee adopt an insurance policy. They thought that if they killed her, they could receive a large amount of insurance money.
However, the employee forged the insurance policy that was not registered with the company, the spokesman said.
Around this time, Yeom established a bogus company and recruited three employees in a similar plot to get insurance money. He got life insurance under their names, and attempted to kill them, according to a spokesman.
The police began an investigation of the murder after receiving a report that the insurance company employee was missing.
Jin and the two accomplices admitted to having killed the woman, the spokesman said.