Crypto-powered Drugs Smuggling Ring ‘Hid Narcotics on Mountain’
Police said they had remanded nine people in custody, including two suspected South Korean ringleaders (both aged 36).
Officers added that they had charged 25 other people with related crimes. Police say the ring was active from August 2023 to April this year.
A police spokesperson added that the ring sold the narcotics online to crypto-paying buyers. The group reportedly made use of Telegram as a communications tool.
Recent reports have claimed that Korean-language Telegram channels have become a “department store” for drug buyers and dealers.
Chungbuk Police Agency said its criminal task force’s drug crime investigation unit carried out the raids.
A police spokesperson explained that the suspected masterminds hid the drugs they received in a “hole in a mountainside.”
When police investigated this hiding place, they found almost six liters of synthetic marijuana solution.
This haul alone is “worth over $1 million” on the domestic market, officers told reporters.
Investigators also found 181g of methamphetamine and 31g of ketamine, all “buried under the ground in the countryside.”
Officers said that gang members would periodically come to the hiding place to divide the synthetic marijuana “into 10ml units (vials).”
They would then “sell these through social media channels such as Telegram.” In each case, recipients would “pay in cryptocurrency,” police said.
