According to local news outlet The JoongAng, an indictment on May 22 revealed that four individuals named Mr. Jeon, Mr. Kim, Mr. Ko and Mr. Hwang in court proceedings, all of whom were employees of South Korean crypto exchange Coinone, allegedly used illicit means to profit more than 2.98 billion Korean won ($2.26 million) during coin listings from various projects. At least 46 coins were involved in the incident lasting from November 2019 to December 2022, accounting for nearly 25% of all tokens listed on Coinone.
As told by prosecutors, Coinone executives and staff members required projects to sign a market-making (MM) contract with a specific MM company through brokers before a coin’s listing. This was done to ensure sufficient liquidity in trading volume after the new coins were listed. However, the contract’s recipients allegedly operated illegally by artificially boosting trading volume and prices through cross-trading. Coinone executives also allegedly enticed projects into signing such contracts by offering to remove “listing deposits” if they did so.