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South Korea Moves to Prosecute Crypto Whale Over Alleged Cross-Border Pump-and-Dump

7/1/2026

South Korea's authorities are pursuing prosecution of a cryptocurrency whale — a large-scale token holder — accused of orchestrating a cross-border pump-and-dump scheme.

The suspect allegedly inflated a token's price on overseas trading platforms before liquidating those holdings on a domestic South Korean exchange, exploiting a jurisdictional gap to execute both legs of the alleged manipulation while minimising exposure to any single regulator.

The case marks one of Seoul's more explicit attempts to treat digital-asset market manipulation as a prosecutable crime regardless of where part of the trade occurred.

How the Alleged Scheme Worked The mechanics described by South Korean authorities follow a structure regulators have come to recognise as deliberate: conduct the inflationary phase offshore, where rules and surveillance differ, then exit on the domestic venue once the position has been talked up.

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