On Thursday, October 15, 2026, Crypto News reported that a South Korean court had acquitted a prominent cryptocurrency influencer known online as “Coin King Jonbur Kim” of all charges tied to an alleged fraud scheme valued at 340 billion won, or roughly $253 million.
The Seoul Southern District Court ruled that prosecutors had not presented persuasive evidence connecting the defendant, identified only as Park, to the fraudulent issuance of tokens, the listing of those tokens on exchanges, or the manipulation of their prices.
Judges found that without concrete digital evidence linking Park’s personal devices or accounts to the back-end software used to manipulate the market, the criminal charges could not stand. The report said there was no explicit proof that Park personally carried out the alleged operations.
Park, a well-known figure in South Korea’s crypto
Park, a well-known figure in South Korea’s crypto community, first came to the attention of authorities in December 2023, when he was apprehended while trying to leave the country by fishing boat to evade a financial investigation. He spent several months in prison over the smuggling attempt before additional charges were filed against him in February 2025.
Prosecutors alleged that Park ran a large-scale market manipulation campaign involving digital tokens including Podo Coin and Artube. According to the accusations, he bribed executives at crypto exchanges, released misleading project updates, and pushed up token prices before selling the holdings to individual investors. Prosecutors asked the court to impose a 20-year prison sentence, citing significant losses suffered by investors.
Podo Coin and Artube, both relatively obscure tokens that were promoted in South Korea, now carry negligible market value following their link to the investigation.
Reaction to the verdict was mixed
Reaction to the verdict was mixed. Commentator @RackhamRishel said the acquittal had raised public interest in examining the court documents to understand weaknesses in the prosecution’s case. Market analyst @LFGCAPO said the ruling turned on the absence of direct digital forensic evidence tying Park to the manipulation, and was not an endorsement of the tokens.
Independent reviewers likewise described the decision as a technical acquittal based solely on the evidence, rather than a finding that either token was a legitimate investment.
The ruling did not address restitution, and victims of the alleged scheme have received no compensation. Online user @LoidOx noted that the not-guilty verdict offers no help to investors who lost money. Authorities had earlier seized several of Park’s luxury vehicles, including a Ferrari valued at $4.3 million, but legal experts consider it unlikely that those assets will be used to repay the investors.
Separately, as the high-profile trial concluded, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung announced that the country’s financial sector had been hit by a cyberattack. He ordered authorities to deploy additional personnel and re
