A Seoul court has acquitted a South Korean cryptocurrency influencer of charges that he masterminded a fraudulent digital token scheme worth $253 million, involving the Podo coin and ATube tokens.

The Seoul Southern District Court found the 45-year-old man, surnamed Park and known online as “Coin King Jonber Kim,” not guilty on October 15, according to a report by Yonhap News Agency. Prosecutors had sought a 20-year prison sentence, along with the seizure of more than $14 million from his estate.

The court concluded there was no proven link between Park's actions and the movement of the two tokens' prices, or the decisions of investors to buy them. The outcome illustrates the evidentiary bar in South Korean financial crime cases, where prosecutors must establish not only that promotional materials were misleading, but also that those materials directly caused investors to buy.

What Prosecutors Alleged

Prosecutors said Park was the mastermind behind two digital tokens, Podo coin and ATube. They argued that he made false promises to investors in both projects and manipulated the market prices of the two tokens.

According to prosecutors, the scheme allowed Park to take $253 million from a large group of investors, making the case one of the largest crypto fraud prosecutions in South Korea.

Park was well known on social media, where he frequently showed off luxury cars and said he had made his fortune from digital assets, building a public profile as a successful trader.

Why the Court Ruled for the Defendant

The court said the evidence presented by prosecutors was not enough to convict, ruling that the prosecution had failed to demonstrate a direct link between Park's actions and the changes in the tokens' prices.

The judges did agree that the proposals described in the tokens' white papers were deceptive. A white paper is a document that explains a cryptocurrency project to prospective buyers. The court nevertheless found that it could not be proven these documents alone led people to purchase the tokens, and it examined how victims had actually made their decisions.

In its review, the court found that many buyers did not rely on the white papers at all, while others provided no clear details about why they had bought in.

“Even among the victims whose statements were confirmed, there are cases where they purchased based on blogs, Youtube, communities, or acquaintances' introductions rather than white papers or the defendants' materials, where the purchasing circumstances were not revealed,” the court said.

That finding meant prosecutors had not established that Park's conduct, rather than other sources of information, was what drove the purchases. On that basis, the court cleared Park of the financial crime charges in the Podo coin and ATube case. Under South Korean procedure, prosecutors and defendants may appeal a district court verdict to a higher court, and any appeal would move the case forward for fresh review.

A Wider Enforcement Backdrop

The verdict comes as South Korea has stepped up its actions against cryptocurrency fraud. In August, in a separate ruling, the same court sentenced Jeong Sang-ho, the former chief executive of digital asset bank Delio, to 15 years in prison. Delio was declared insolvent in November 2024, and the court found that Jeong had embezzled $49.2 million in customer assets.

South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service, the country's top financial regulator, has also begun using AI tools to price manipulation on the country's largest crypto exchanges. The system is said to spot the price changes that often appear when such schemes are carried out. Taken together, the acquittal and the Delio sentence show how differently Korean courts can weigh major crypto cases, distinguishing embezzlement proven through misused customer funds from token promotion charges that failed on causation.