Man jailed for fraud after faking lottery forecast program

A Korean man in his 40s was sentenced to one year in prison for swindling hundreds of millions of won from another man by persuading the victim to invest in a program that the man said aids in winning the lottery, a court said Friday.

According to a Daejeon court, the perpetrator met the victim through social media in 2019. The man presented fake receipts that showed he had won the first and second prizes in the lottery through a "lottery number forecast" program he claimed to have developed. He boasted about using the prize money to purchase apartment units and a luxury car.

The accused claimed that the program could generate combinations of numbers with a high likelihood of winning. He then asked the victim to invest money in the program, promising to purchase lottery tickets in bulk and divide the prize money should they win.

However, it was revealed that the man had never developed such a program and had never won the first and second prizes in the lottery. His only winnings were from securing third place twice.

Under the guise of a joint investment, he received a total of 238 million won ($178,000) between December 2019 and April 2020 from the victim.

The man went to trial to face a fraud charge, where he claimed that he had spent all the money on purchasing lottery tickets.

However, a judge pointed out that since an individual can only buy up to 100,000 won in lottery tickets at a single store, the man would have had to visit 201 stores in Daejeon every week, which the judge deemed to be implausible.