Two South Korean police officers have been indicted in connection with a $186 million cryptocurrency money laundering case.

According to Decrypt, a South Korean police chief and senior police officer have been charged with accepting bribes from an illegal cryptocurrency exchange operator, implicated in a $186 million (approximately 249.6 billion won) money laundering scheme involving voice scams. Both have been dismissed and indicted. Prosecutors allege that between July 2022 and February 2024, the two officers received approximately $59,000 (79 million won) and $7,500 (10 million won) in cash and luxury goods, respectively, to assist the criminal gang by providing investigative information, unfreezing accounts, introducing lawyers, and coordinating law enforcement resources. The criminal network converted funds obtained from voice scams into Tether (USDT) through an illegal cryptocurrency exchange masquerading as a gift certificate shop. Prosecutors have frozen approximately $1.1 million (1.5 billion won) in illicit assets, including $600,000 (800 million won) in USDT, estimating the total proceeds of the crime at approximately $8.4 million (11.2 billion won). Similar cases are also frequently reported globally. In July of this year, the anti-corruption agency in Karnataka, India, discovered that two police officers attempted to launder bribes using cryptocurrency; in March, senior members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were accused of misappropriating $21 million in crypto assets during an investigation of the cryptocurrency exchange Cryptoland.