Head of South Korea’s Biggest Crypto Exchange ‘Not Guilty’ of Data Manipulation
The head of Dunamu, operator of South Korea’s market-leading Upbit crypto exchange, has been found not guilty of manipulating platform data.
Per Chosun Ilbo, the nation’s Supreme Court acquitted the Dunamu Chairman Song Chi-hyung, of fraud charges under the Aggravated Punishment Act for Specific Economic Crimes.
Prosecutors alleged Song and a group of executives with Chairman Song with manipulating order volumes by creating fake member accounts on Upbit between September and November 2017.
They claimed Song and others had created accounts in the name of customers who did not actually exist.
Prosecution officials said Song and the executives used these bogus accounts to buy and sell Bitcoin.
They said the group moved BTC 11,550 around 26,000 wallets to artificially boost trading volumes.
They claimed the executives had carried out almost $93 million worth of transactions in this manner, helping swell Upbit’s volume figures.
And they claimed the “fake customer” transactions had helped the group make money, trading at the height of the bear market – and generate profits worth almost $114 million.
A district court cleared Song and the executives of the charges, and a branch of the high court upheld this decision.
But prosecution officials were determined to try again, taking the case to the Supreme Court.
However, all three courts agreed that the prosecution had used “illegal methods” to obtain evidence.
The court heard that prosecution officials had “illegally accessed” information from Dunamu’s Amazon-provided cloud accounts.
Prosecutors had been granted conditional search and seize warrants in their initial investigation, defense attorneys argued.
But lawyers said the warrants did not grant officers the right to search remote
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