South Korean police managed to trade digital fingerprints left by over 40 suspects that allegedly paid for access to videos of sexual exploitation and rape of minors with the use of cryptocurrencies in the case known as “Nth Room”.
Yonhap News, local news agency, published a report on April 27 and said that a raid was carried out on 20 of the large South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges. This led to information that the police managed to use in order to locate users. This created a clear precedent when it comes to the country’s crypto-related crimes investigations.
It was also added that there was a case with a man that lived in Seoul, the Yonhdongpo district, who committed suicided because his identity was revealed. There was no connection proven between the Nth Room case and his own, according to the police and checks done on his phone.
Local authorities though did manage to find proof that the suspect sent crypto payments to a wallet that is believed to belong to the mastermind behind the child porn ring, Cho Joo-bin.
The police thinks that it will be able to tall up the total income that Cho received from those that paid for access to the videos showing child rape footage, usually set up through chats on Telegram. Police data shows that around 26,000 people actually sent payments that were related to this huge Nth Room case. The crypto exchanges quickly aided authorities without any need to force them to do so.
In fact, crypto exchanges in South Korea are collaborating with local law enforcement in order to help with the Nth Room case. This has been going on for some time now. This includes exchanges like Korbit, Coinone, Bithumb and Upbit, all allowing police access to information to reveal identities of people involved in the Nth Room child porn scandal.
It is not yet known how much was paid for access but the authorities did say that there were members that even paid $1,200 in cryptocurrencies.
