Haru Invest froze 1.4 trillion won; its CEO was stabbed in court; the fraud case failed

Haru Invest was a Korean virtual-asset deposit service promising returns of up to 16% a year from automated trading strategies. On June 13, 2023, it suspended withdrawals and deposits, closed its head office, and blamed unspecified 'partner issues.' The partner was later identified in reporting as B&S Holdings, an entrusted trading firm. In February 2024 Korean prosecutors arrested and indicted Haru's executives, alleging they had defrauded customers of roughly 1.4 trillion won collected from about 16,000 users since March 2020.

The estate never came back. In April 2024 the Seoul Rehabilitation Court dismissed rehabilitation applications for Haru Invest, Haru Invest Korea, Delio (which froze the next day) and Block Crafters alike, ruling that going-concern value could not exceed liquidation value and that creditors were better off in bankruptcy than waiting for a business that would not resume. The criminal trial proceeded under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes, with prosecutors seeking 15 to 20 years for an 'organized, professional' scheme.

Then the case unraveled — after violence interrupted it. In August 2024 a depositor who said he lost 100 BTC (about $8.3 million) stabbed CEO Lee Hyung-soo during a hearing; prosecutors later asked for a decade in prison for the attacker, while the Haru Invest Victims' Association publicly demanded his release, arguing victims were being treated unfairly while executives walked free on bail.

On June 17, 2025, the Seoul Southern District Court's Criminal Division 15 acquitted co-CEOs Park and Song and business chief Lee of fraud. The alleged takings had been revised to 880.5 billion won from about 6,000 customers. The court reasoned the defendants had poured 5.5 billion won of their own funds into the company and deposited their own coins — conduct hard to reconcile with intent to swindle. Only the chief operating officer was convicted, and only of embezzling about 360 million won of company money: two years, suspended.

Prosecutors counted 1.4 trillion won (~$1B) from some 16,000 users, revised at trial to 880.5 billion won from ~6,000 — none of it returned by the verdict.

The product was a black box: customers bought a brand promising automated strategies while actual trading sat with an entrusted partner the platform could not explain, and the freeze named nothing.

The freeze made everything look like theft: pausing withdrawals and closing the office with no recovery plan left no visible difference between a failed partner and a stolen wallet.

The criminal theory outran the evidence: prosecutors billed an organized trillion-won fraud, but intent is hard to prove when the executives themselves were heavy investors in the scheme that failed.

Two years of limbo radicalized creditors: victims watched executives out on bail, then one of their own charged over attacking the CEO in court — and any shared account of events was gone.

Routing customer assets through an opaque consignment trader owns that risk. When it fails, 'it was our partner' is not a disclosure regime — and deception proved harder to prosecute than loss.

The fraud acquittals left the 880.5-billion-won question unresolved: the rehabilitation route was already dead, so recovery runs through liquidation and the separate case against the trading partner. The company is gone, and executives' liability shrank to a suspended sentence for minor embezzlement. The stabbing case ran on parallel tracks — prosecutors sought 10 years for the attacker in March 2025 — while the Victims' Association campaigned for his release, arguing fraud victims were being treated unfairly while executives walked free on bail.