A South Korean court has sentenced a 90-year-old woman to a year in prison for helping her jailed son launder drug money. korea herald Informed.
The son is a smuggling kingpin and is currently lodged in a Cambodian jail.
The Incheon District Court ordered the defendant to forfeit 386 million won (about $260,000, €220,000) that he had laundered on behalf of his son.
What do we know about the woman’s money laundering activities?
The court held that the defendant knowingly received and transferred funds associated with drug crimes. Prosecutors say she extorted 386 million won from unidentified individuals on nine occasions between April 2020 and February 2022, before transferring the funds to bank accounts designated for her son.
The 60-year-old son was arrested in Cambodia in July 2020 on charges including possession of methamphetamine. korea herald Informed. He is imprisoned there, and investigators believe that drug trafficking operations continued during his captivity.
“The defendant accepted illegal earnings despite being aware of the circumstances indicating his connection to drug-related crimes,” the judge said of the mother, noting the serious social harm caused by drug-related crimes and the need for strict sentencing.
The court found evidence contradicting the woman’s claim that she was unaware of the nature of her crime when she committed the crime, noting that she had visited Cambodia five times in 2019 and had been informed about her son’s custody over the phone.
“His actions made illicit gains difficult to trace and contributed to the proliferation of narcotics, making the crime particularly serious,” the judge said.
However, when deciding on the sentence, the court took into account the woman’s age and lack of any prior drug-related convictions.
Edited by: Elisabeth Schumacher