This photo taken on Jan. 22, 2019, shows an individual holding a Lotto ticket. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Aug. 10 (Korea Bizwire) — A criminal organization that tricked customers by claiming that it could win first prize in a weekly national lottery draw with artificial intelligence (AI) technology has been handed over to the police on fraud allegations.
The Gyeonggi Bukbu Provincial Police Agency said Tuesday that 52 people have been apprehended on charges of false advertisement and fraud, and four of whom have been taken into custody.
The organization has been operating 92 websites that claimed to calculate the winning lottery numbers from July 2012 to June this year, ripping off 64,104 people to the tune of 60.7 billion won (US$46.3 million).
They used manipulated photos of winning lottery tickets to entice customers and swapped the estimated lottery number with the winning one immediately after the lottery show.
The lottery numbers “provided by AI” turned out to be random numbers sorted by five members of the organization.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
