South Korean executives involved in a $1.5 billion cryptocurrency exchange fraud have been arrested.

As a result of the most recent legal development, the number of V Global executives currently serving time in prison has increased to seven. This comes after the company's CEO was previously handed a prison sentence of 22 years.

Six executives who were involved in the $1.5 billion (2 trillion won) South Korean cryptocurrency exchange fraud perpetrated by V Global were sentenced to prison terms ranging from four to eight years; however, three of those executives were not detained so that they could fight certain charges in court.

V Global was active from July 2020 until April 2021 and solicited approximately 50,000 investors with the promise of 300% returns on their investments in addition to sizable payments for referring new clients.

According to a translation of reports published on December 26 by South Korean media outlets such as Economist.co.kr, two high-ranking executives by the names of Mr. Yang and Mr. Oh were sentenced to respective terms of eight years and three years in prison for their participation in a scheme to defraud investors.

Additional sentences of three years in prison and five years of probation were handed down to four unnamed executives.

However, three of the total six have not yet been detained because they have asserted their innocence to the charges against them and are exercising their right to defend themselves in court.

The judge from the 12th Criminal Division of the Suwon District Court stated that "the defendants only trusted the VGlobal management team," "evaded responsibility," and "once the investigation began, they destroyed evidence and interfered with the investigation."

However, according to reports, the judge showed some leniency toward the defendants because the actual amount of fraud and the number of investors who were affected was lower than what was initially thought at this time last year.

According to a report published by Kyeongin in February, this was due to later evidence showing that approximately 10,000 investors had actually made returns from V Global via payments from multilevel marketing incentives such as customer recruitment bonuses. Specifically, the report states that these returns were made through customer recruitment bonuses. According to reports, a significant number of users put their newly acquired wealth back into the platform before it was disabled.

In June of the previous year it was alleged that the company had paid out its customer referral bonuses, which were reportedly worth $1,000 each, to existing investors via the influx of capital from new users, in a manner that was similar to a Ponzi scheme.

As a result of the most recent legal development, the total number of V Global executives currently serving time in prison has increased to seven. This comes after the company's CEO, also known as Mr. Lee, was given a prison sentence of 22 years in February.