The government has been putting pressure on criminals, saying it wants to root out charter fraud. Today, it announced the results of a special inspection of authorized brokers suspected of participating in charter fraud. More than 100 violations were found in the Seoul metropolitan area alone. Let’s take a closer look with reporter Lee Joon-gyu, who is on the ground at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport. Lee, welcome back.

[Reporter]
Yes, hello.

[Anchor]
Let’s start with some background on today’s government announcement. This investigation, how did it come about?

[Reporter]
Michuhol-gu, Incheon, Gangseo-gu, Seoul, Dongtan, Gyeonggi-do, etc. are representative areas that are known to be victims of charter fraud, right? Before the nationwide investigation, we conducted an investigation in the metropolitan area first. MOLIT, together with Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, Incheon, and the Korea Association of Real Estate Agents, organized a 150-member investigation team, and the investigation period was 82 days from February 27 to May 19. We couldn’t investigate all the real estate agencies operating in the Seoul metropolitan area, so we targeted the real estate agencies, let’s call them Housing Urban Guarantee Corporation, or HUG, that had caused a guarantee incident related to the return of HUG’s rental deposit and, among other things, brokered contracts to rent a house owned by a rogue landlord with suspicions of fraud or something like that more than once.

[anchor]
In other words, if you did it once, you may have done it unknowingly, but if you worked with a rental scammer two or more times, you’re a co-conspirator or accomplice, or something like that.

[Reporter]
Right, and it turns out that there are 242 such agents in the metropolitan area in total, and when we did our research, we found that 99 of them committed 108 offenses in total.

[Anchor]
There are nearly 100 real estate agents in the Seoul metropolitan area who participated in or helped with the charter fraud.

Yonhap

[Reporter]
That’s right. Out of the 108 cases, 53 cases, nearly half of them, were referred to the police for investigation because they were deemed to be serious. Of these, the most reported type, with 41 cases, is unregistered brokerage. Even if you are a certified real estate agent, you must register to open a brokerage office, but if you do not register, you will be caught, so it refers to the act of brokering without such registration. There were a lot of cases of this type of behavior, such as brokering without being registered as a real estate agency and helping charter scams like a ghost, or brokering without registration and then denying the fact by saying, “I never wrote a contract.” The next most common type of investigation was inducing victims to rent a fraudulent house by lying to them, or inducing them to sign a contract by confusing them as if they were a real estate agent with a similar name even though they were not a real estate agent, with five cases each.

[anchor]
So you paid to go to a real estate agent to get a good deal, but you got the trust axe for lying to you or using a similar name.

[Reporter]
That’s right. In Bucheon-si, Gyeonggi-do, it was found that charter fraudsters approached these real estate agents and offered them kickbacks such as, “If you sign a contract, we will pay you a reward of 0.2% of the deposit per contract.” Swayed by the money, the real estate agents temporarily hired them as brokerage assistants, and using a newly constructed villa far from the office, they signed a whopping 34 contracts in six months, pocketing the money.

[anchor]
So you closed more than one deal a week and pocketed the money.

[Reporter]
Yes. In Michuhol-gu, Incheon, a real estate agent claimed that he had only ghostwritten signatures on the contracts. First of all, it was wrong enough to lend his name to a brokerage firm, but it turned out that there were two more cases like the one that caught Dulmi, so an investigation was decided.

[anchor]
Well, if it’s stamped and signed by a real estate agent, you’re already guilty of a crime, and I don’t understand why they’re saying it’s unfair to do that in three cases. What are the other types of referrals besides investigations?

[Reporter]
There was a broker who lent a certified broker registration certificate스포츠토토, in which case it was decided to cancel the registration. Administrative penalties include suspension of business and fines. Among them, the highest level of suspension of business was 6 months. There were 3 cases where the amount of charter transacted was falsely recorded or a double contract was written. There was 1 case where the brokerage fee was higher than the set amount, which was possible because there was a quid pro quo. There is a possibility that the brokerage assistant with disqualification reasons, charter fraud forces. In addition, there was a case of a six-month suspension for not keeping the contract, not keeping the confirmation statement for the property, or intentionally not signing or stamping the confirmation statement. Fines were imposed for failing to renew surety bonds, failing to properly report brokerage assistants, one-month suspensions, insufficient descriptions of brokered properties, violating signs and advertisements, and failing to post office registration certificates.

[anchor]
Now that the metropolitan investigation is over, the next step will be nationwide, right?

Yonhap]

[Reporter]
Yes. We have already started the second round of special inspections on July 22, which will last until July 31. This time, the area has been expanded to the entire country, and the number of suspicious transactions has been greatly increased, so it is said that about 3,700 people are being investigated. Also, brokers who were involved in suspicious transactions more than once in the Seoul metropolitan area were targeted, but this time, even if they are involved only once, they will be investigated. In addition, there are 2091 transactions that the Real Estate Consumer Protection Planning Group has screened as suspicious, and brokers connected to these transactions, as well as brokers that local governments across the country consider suspicious, are also included in the investigation.

[anchor]
The real estate agents who took advantage of the anxiety of trying to find a sublet house at a time when house prices were rising and falling. There needs to be a thorough investigation and stiff penalties, Lee, thank you.