There are rats on the ship, and some are jumping

[pinballdave]

http://massivelyop.net/2015/03/13/embezzlement-scandal-rocks-ncsoft/

[pinballdave]

Tens of millions of Korean currency... wait to raise some serious red flags. The greedy embezzlers always get caught.

[Aggelakis]

Keep in mind that 10s of millions of Korean won ends up being (depending on what "tens of millions" actually is) about $20k-$90k US dollars. Then split that three (or more) ways. So these people were just really pancaking stupid because they basically said "LOL MY LIFE IS WORTH $20,000, LET'S STEAL IT". What? Are you daft?

I can't believe people sometimes.

[pinballdave]

Recent web survey shows 1 won = 0.00088 dollars

[Aggelakis]

Yes. "10s of millions of won" could mean anywhere from "20 million won" ($17k) to "99,999,999 won" ($88k) (though anything above 90 million won is more likely to be reported as 100 million.)

And then you have to split that among the embezzlers, which reports to be three or more people. So...they don't value themselves very highly. I kind of want it to be on the low range, just so that people lose their jobs and face criminal charges - permanent record kind of thing - over, like, five to ten thousand dollars. lol

[TonyV]

Eh, I've seen people lose their jobs over embezzling less.  A lady where I used to work was once fired because she was running a side business printing flyers and such, and the company discovered that she was using company supplies (paper, printers, toner, etc.) to do it after hours.  All in all, probably around $1000 worth of supplies, including a color laser printer, and she was escorted out of the building.  To be fair, the company didn't press charges, but still, it was pretty dumb.

Our company also gives away soft drinks for people to enjoy while they're on company premises--the company policy actually has it worded that way because people used to fill up their briefcases or backpacks or whatever with the "free" soft drinks before leaving work and taking a dozen or two home with them.  After the company policy was modified and communicated out, they actually fired a few people for being stupid enough to continue doing it.  In fact, I don't know if this was just a rumor or actually happened, but I heard that a cleaning company had their contract canceled with our company because they found out that some of the cleaning people were loading up a dozen or so cans on every floor, filling up one of those large cleaning buckets, and then carrying out enough drinks to have a huge party.

Idiots.

Still, what strikes me about this news isn't so much the amount of money that was stolen, it was that it happened under the watch of an executive management team that is currently under VERY heavy scrutiny by Nexon, who has already let it be publicly known that they do not like how NCsoft is running things.  I can't help but think that this is another nail in the coffin of NCsoft's status quo.  I guess time will tell.

[FatherXmas]

http://massivelyop.net/2015/03/13/embezzlement-scandal-rocks-ncsoft/

I laugh at topic title because the amount is so trivial, it only sounds big due to $1 USD is worth over 1,000 KrW.  It's like having a news report stating that the robbers got away with hundreds of thousands of cents.

Sounds like someone funneled a contract to a friend/relative/mob, paid them, got nothing delivered and split the contract fee with them (or kept their knees in the case of the mob).

[Joshex]

money goes a lot farther there, most people live on around 20k won a week (information from an inside source)

so millions of won is still quite a lot for them.

Economies are a finicky thing, you'd think everything would balance out, for example a camera in the Uk might cost 20 quid and a camera in China might cost 200 Yuan. assuming this revelation translates to all aspects of the economy is completely wrong, it only translates to imported or corporate products.

Food is cheaper where the money is cheaper. I bought serious quantities of vegetables in china for about 1 UK pence which is 0.10 yuan. housing, clothes, water, food, electricity, gas all the necessities are cheaper than you'd think. really helps that they actually FEED THEMSELVES as opposed to some western countries who are in effect trading services and oil for food from starving over-populated countries.

to put it simply, these embezzlers thought they were about to live the easy life. I'm sure they never wanted to leave their home country with the money. to them the western world is "crazy". "you expect me to pay how much for kimchi?! $2!!? in korea I could buy-out a whole restaurant full of kimchi for that!"

In reality the majority of people in most eastern countries tend to have a greater and more founded sense of patriotism in their countries, so they don't want to leave. They typically don't worry over what the political system is going to do and typically find it easy to get work that can help them live relatively comfortably with the expense of time spent on said job.

10's of millions of won is 500+ weeks worth of money, but if invested well it could make them a korean billionaire, my guess is that was the plan.