SEOUL, Aug. 5 (Yonhap) -- South Korean investigators have busted a South Korean scam ring operating in Kazakhstan in a joint operation with the Central Asian country's authorities, national police said Wednesday.

Investigators from a governmentwide special task force on transnational crimes apprehended 14 members of the scam ring in an operation in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on July 23, while five other members residing in South Korea have also been arrested, the Korean National Police Agency (KNPA) said in a briefing. All 19 suspects are Korean nationals, it added.

The operation marked the first time South Korean authorities have directly apprehended a South Korean scam organization operating from Central Asia.

The ring has been classified as a scam organization because its members committed various types of phishing crimes, including voice phishing and financial fraud carried out through text messages.

The KNPA speculated that some South Korean scam organizations operating in Southeast Asia, including Cambodia and Vietnam, appeared to have relocated their bases to Central Asia amid intensified crackdowns, resulting in a so-called balloon effect.

The joint crackdown operation was dubbed "Ine," which means "needle" in Kazakh, reflecting the authorities' determination to burst the balloon effect, the agency explained.

The Almaty ring was originally based in Cambodia but moved its base to Kazakhstan via Vietnam in April. The police speculated Kazakhstan's well-established information technology infrastructure, ease of land escape to neighboring countries, and comfortable living environment for Koreans may have been reasons for the ring's relocation.

It has been found that the scam ring swindled approximately 600 million won (US$421,000) from 16 domestic victims by setting up a call center in Almaty and impersonating officials of government agencies, such as the Financial Supervisory Service, the prosecution and courts.

Some victims voluntarily transferred their money to the scam ring after being deceived into believing their accounts were involved in criminal activity, the KNPA said.

The arrested scam ring members are in their 20s to 40s and are all men except for one woman in her 30s, the KNPA said, adding the 14 suspects arrested in Kazakhstan have all been repatriated to South Korea between July 28 and Wednesday.

ycm@yna.co.kr

(END)

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