$104M Worth Assets of Terra Co-Founder Confiscated by South Korea

• Prosecutors claim that the co-founder made “unfair” gains of roughly 140B Korean won.
• Shin co-founder Chai corp., a local payments tech business.

On Thursday, local prosecutors in Seoul allegedly had their plea to freeze roughly 140 billion won ($104 million) in assets belonging to Terraform Labs co-founder Shin Hyun-seung, or Daniel Shin, accepted by the Seoul Southern District Court. To safeguard against a defendant using illegal funds for personal gain before trial, a pre-indictment freezing order may be issued.

Prosecutors claim that Terra’s co-founder made “unfair” gains of roughly 140 billion Korean won by misrepresenting the nature of the pre-issued cryptocurrency LUNA, currently known as Luna classic (LUNC), to investors. On Thursday, however, Shin allegedly admitted to authorities that he had not sold the cryptocurrency at its zenith before the token’s fall.

Concern Over Number of Tokens Issued

Forkast cites Hwang Suk-jin, a professor of information security at Dongguk University and a frequent speaker on crypto policy in the National Assembly of South Korea. As per Hwang, it’s a pre-mining issue. This is due to the fact that little information was provided prior to token distribution.

The professor elaborated, saying that investors “inevitably suffer losses,” for instance, if “thought 1,000 tokens have been issued and in fact 10,000 have been issued.”

Chai corp., a local payments tech business Shin co-founded is presently also under investigation for the possible misuse of client data in the introduction of Chai’s Terra payment services. The payment processing firm was allegedly raided by law enforcement on Thursday.

Additionally, since May, South Korean authorities have been looking into the demise of LUNA and have filed an arrest warrant for Do Kwon, who co-founded Terraform Labs with Shin. He is also the subject of an Interpol Red Notice. According to reports from late last month, South Korean officials have blocked Kwon’s cryptocurrency holdings. Kwon, though, said the monies in frozen weren’t his.