Cyber-porn bandits swindle 12 billion won

Police have arrested the operators of eight mobile porn websites for swindling 12.1 billion won ($11.6 million) from users through a “small-sum payment” scam, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said Monday.

The cyber-crime unit said the criminals, including a 34-year-old man identified by the surname Woo, sent out some 80 million spam messages to mobile phone users promoting some 30 mobile porn sites.

The messages claimed that by becoming a member of the site – free of charge – users could access pornography for free. In order to sign up, people supposedly had to submit their resident ID and mobile phone numbers as part of an adult verification process.

The sites then charged the users 16,500 won a month.

The police said the total amount received was “the largest amount to be stolen by the online scammers.”

In all, the scammers collected about 280,000 pieces of private data from some 190,000 victims from October 2012 through November 2013.