Fraudsters impersonate Bank of Korea Governor Shin Hyun-song to set up investment scam accounts, with illegal stock recommendation groups still active.

Fake accounts impersonating Bank of Korea Governor Rhee Chang-yong have recently popped up on South Korean social platforms, luring followers under the pretense of "helping you understand economic trends and grasp market directions." The accounts do not openly recommend individual stocks directly, but tell users who add them as friends or send direct messages that they have study groups, guiding them to join; once inside the groups, operators claim to offer stocks with double-digit returns and demand personal information. After the Bank of Korea requested platform operators to remove the fake accounts, they were suspended within hours of surfacing, but the stock-recommendation groups that many users had already joined continued operating on Telegram. When reporters asked the group operators about their relationship with the Bank of Korea, they evaded the question, stating, "Financial institutions inherently have many internal details that are hard for outsiders to understand." Impersonating public figures to divert traffic to illegal stock-recommendation groups has become a standard tactic in investment fraud. Beyond Rhee Chang-yong, prominent South Korean financial industry figures, entertainers, and financial influencers are frequently impersonated; even official accounts of well-known investment communities and YouTube channels have been faked, and photos posted by ordinary social media users are also stolen. According to data obtained from the Financial Supervisory Service by People Power Party lawmaker Seo Il-joon, investment fraud phishing cases hit 6,769 in the first quarter of this year, with total losses of 181.7 billion won; last year, there were 11,468 such cases, amounting to 391.6 billion won in losses.