An alleged 51-year-old client who lost money after Haru froze withdrawals was identified as the attacker.
Key Takeaways
- Haru Invest CEO Hugo Lee was stabbed during a fraud trial in Seoul by an investor who lost money.
- Haru Invest is accused of stealing $826 million from investors in an alleged Ponzi scheme.
The CEO of the alleged Korean Ponzi scheme Haru Invest was attacked during a court trial in Seoul on Aug. 28. As reported by local news outlet Digital Asset, Hugo Hyungsoo Lee was stabbed multiple times in his neck.
The attacker is a 51-year-old man, identified as Kang, who is allegedly a Haru investor who lost money after the firm froze withdrawals in June 2023.
Lee was rushed to the scene around ten minutes later, and an ambulance took him to a nearby hospital 23 minutes after the attack. According to News1, Lee is in critical condition.
The trial is related to the accusations that Lee and two other executives from Haru Invest are facing for allegedly stealing $826 million from investors. The company, which was active from March 2020 to June 2023, promised earnings based on crypto deposits but suddenly stopped paying its clients.
Lee was arrested and indicted on charges of fraud under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes in February and released on bail last month.
Over $13 billion in losses
The promise of fixed earnings based on investors’ lack of knowledge about crypto caused losses on the scale of billions of dollars around the world.
OneCoin is believed to have defrauded investors by $5.8 billion after convincing them that the company’s token was the “Bitcoin Killer.” The scheme operated under a multi-level marketing structure and rewarded the onboarding of new members with cash and OneCoin tokens.
Bitconnect is another infamous Ponzi scheme that used crypto-related buzzwords to attract unaware investors. Promising monthly returns of 40% by locking Bitconnect’s BCC token, the scheme vanished with $3.5 billion from investors.
The most recent among the three largest Ponzi schemes in crypto is PlusToken, a scheme orchestrated to lure Chinese, Korean, and Japanese investors into the possibility of earning 10% to 30% monthly. After luring over 3 million investors, PlusToken shut down in 2019 and fleed with $3 billion.
Authorities managed to arrest most of the individuals related to PlusToken and recover $4 billion in crypto due to price fluctuations.