Fraud demographics: Why people in 20s now lead crimes once ruled by 40s

Young South Koreans in their 20s are emerging as a driving force behind the country’s surge in fraud crimes, a trend fueled by the expansion of online marketplaces and worsening economic precarity.

Police data and recent court cases show that many of the scams are carried out through social media and secondhand trading platforms, where anonymity, speed and low barriers to entry make for easy pickings.

In one major case, Gwangju police booked a man in his 20s who led an online scheme that tricked more than 4,000 people on a secondhand marketplace platform, siphoning off an estimated 2.6 billion won ($1.83 million) with 16 others who operated as a group.

Selling discounted department store gift cards, baseball and concert tickets, game items, and other goods on secondhand platforms, the group used fake photos, numerous burner accounts and dozens of borrowed bank accounts to evade detection.

A similar pattern played out in Gyeonggi Province, where a man in his 20s was arrested for defrauding 56 buyers on Karrot, the go-to app for buying and selling secondhand items. The man approached users who posted that they were looking for golf clubs or electronics, pretended to be selling those items, and collected payments of 14 million won in total.

Online gaming has also become a prominent arena for fraud by young offenders. A 24-year-old man was sentenced to nine months in prison and fined 700,000 won after misleading players across 42 separate transactions, promising to level up their characters or sell in-game items. Instead, he pocketed roughly 14 million won and even passed victims’ account IDs and passwords to third parties.

The surge in such cases is in line with a nationwide rise in fraud. South Korea recorded 430,693 fraud crimes last year, marking the third straight year of record highs and a 2.2 percent increase from 2024.

While overall crime rose only 1.9 percent during the same period, fraud now accounts for more than one in four reported offenses. Compared with 2015, total crime has dropped 13.4 percent, but fraud has soared by 74.2 percent.

Among those caught, people in their 20s make up the largest share. Of the 211,051 fraud suspects apprehended in 2024, the number of offenders in their 20s reached 46,575, or 22.1 percent, overtaking older age groups that once dominated such crimes. Until 2014, fraud suspects were mostly in their 40s, the age group most active economically, according to the police.

Police attribute this shift to the dominance of young adults in digital spaces, where most scams now occur.

Experts say the root causes lie at the intersection of digital accessibility and economic strain. With active online marketplaces, social media platforms and gaming environments, opportunities for deception are abundant, while oversight remains limited.

Many young offenders, they note, are drawn by the perception that online scams offer quick cash with relatively low risk, particularly amid hiring difficulties and unstable income prospects.

“Economic downturns often lead to increases in fraud driven by feelings of deprivation,” said Lee Yoon-ho, emeritus professor of police administration at Dongguk University.

“As more people rely on internet transactions and online financial services, the opportunities for crime keep expanding, while our capacity to monitor them remains limited.”

The low skill threshold for executing simple digital scams also lowers the barrier to criminal behavior. Many online fraud schemes require no specialized know-how beyond operating a smartphone or opening new accounts.

"Young offenders often pick up methods from online forums or social media groups where fraudulent techniques circulate informally," Lee added.

Sociologists argue that, for some young adults facing unstable employment or mounting debt, small-sum scams are rationalized as minor or victimless.

"Economic instability amplifies this moral drift. When a person sees peers making quick money through low-level deception without severe consequences, it becomes normalized,” said Kim Sang-hak, a sociology professor at Hanyang University.

Lax consequences are another factor experts highlight. Despite tightening sentencing guidelines, suspects who repay part of the damages — often with help from family members — may receive reduced penalties.

"This dynamic weakens deterrence and feeds the belief among some young offenders that the risks are manageable," Lee explained.

Compounding the problem is a declining arrest rate. Police solved 58.7 percent of fraud cases last year, down sharply from 77.9 percent a decade ago, largely due to the rise of anonymous and cross-platform scams.

Recognizing the urgency, police have expanded their nationwide “malicious fraud tracking teams,” turning them into a permanent unit after initially launching them in 2024.