A 20-year-old man who used AI image-generation tools to forge financial and public documents has been sentenced to seven years in prison by the Busan District Court’s Eastern Branch. From July through January, he allegedly posed as a doctor and entrepreneur with tens of billions of won in assets, using fabricated records to obtain 377 million won from two victims as investment money. Before an initial detention hearing, he submitted through his lawyer a forged balance certificate claiming more than 900 million won in an account that actually held 23 won, but investigators later confirmed the document with the issuing bank and secured his detention.
The court cited unrecovered losses, the absence of victim forgiveness, and the danger of forging both official and private documents for personal protection; the sentence exceeded the prosecution’s six-year request.