1. Case Overview

The client, who had been looking for a short-term part-time job through an internet SNS site, took on the simple task of delivering the price of goods between distributors for a company that she found out on a job bulletin board on a site, and while she went out to collect the price of goods as the employees of the company ordered her, she was caught red-handed and an arrest warrant was filed for allegedly acting as a 'collector' for a serious voice phishing crime that threatened to kidnap and kill.

2. Applicable Law

Article 347 of the Criminal Act, Fraud, defines an act of fraud in which a person is taking property or obtaining pecuniary advantage by defrauding him/her, and stipulates that such fraudulent crimes shall be sentenced up to 10 years in prison or fined up to KRW 20 million.

Meanwhile, Article 70 (1) of the Criminal Procedure Act stipulates that “The court may detain the criminal defendant when a probable cause exists to suspect that he/she has committed a crime and any of the following reasons exist.” Specific reasons for detention include cases when he/she has no fixed dwelling; when there are reasonable grounds enough to suspect that he/she may destroy evidence; and when there are reasonable grounds enough to suspect that he/she may flee. The court examines the grounds for detention and issues an arrest warrant or dismisses the request, taking into account the seriousness of the crime, the risk of recidivism, and the risk of harm to the victim or important witnesses.

3. Assistance of Counsel

Two days after the client was arrested red-handed, the client's fiancé hurriedly called Law-win. The prosecution had filed for an arrest warrant for the client who had already completed two police investigations without the help of a counsel, and the client was about to undergo a warrant hearing in about 15 hours.

In order to hear the detailed facts of the case directly from the client, our lawyers headed to the police detention center located about two hours by car from Seoul as soon they finished talking with the client's fiancé, and visited the client who was in the detention center. Law-win's lawyers, who communicated with a client who could not speak Korean in a foreign language and grasped the circumstances of the case, finished the interview and left the detention center and went straight back to the office, and summarized the situation and detailed facts of the client who is pleading innocence about the alleged voice phishing crime, for the substantive examination of the warrant, which will take place within a few hours.

As soon as the day dawned, our lawyers appeared at the warrant hearing, and argued to the effect that the client was deceived by the main culprits of voice phishing and was used as a tool for the crime without knowing anything, and was never complicit in or participating in a voice phishing crime. They also actively argued to the court that there was no ground for detention for the client.

4. Outcome

In response, the warrant court dismissed the request for an arrest warrant against the client, and the client could be investigated without detention.

5. Significance of the Outcome

This result is meaningful in that, in an urgent situation with only a few hours left before the warrant hearing, despite the high possibility of fleeing or destroying evidence, which is the reason for arrest, and the high possibility of an arrest warrant being issued in light of the seriousness of voice phishing crimes involving kidnapping and death threats, Law-win's lawyers communicated smoothly in foreign languages during interviews with clients, and based on the accurate facts they confirmed, they quickly collected and organized supporting materials and evidence favorable to the client and prepared an opinion on the warrant hearing, finally obtaining the dismissal of the warrant request.