What happened
Prosecutors made the 20-year request during closing arguments at the Seoul Southern District Court on Thursday, per a Yonhap News Agency report carried by Crypto. News. Jeong Sang-ho, the founder and chief executive of crypto lending platform Delio, faces charges that include fraud, embezzlement, and breach of fiduciary duty.
The allegations trace back to June 2023, when Delio abruptly halted withdrawals on its yield-bearing accounts, leaving tens of thousands of Korean retail customers locked out of their balances. Prosecutors argue Jeong knowingly used customer deposits in undisclosed proprietary trading and inter-affiliate lending, then concealed the resulting shortfall from clients and regulators.
Defense counsel contested the loss figures and argued the freeze was a liquidity response to the broader 2023 contagion rather than premeditated fraud.
Why it matters
This is the steepest sentence demand a Korean prosecutor has aired against a domestic crypto executive, and the bench has discretion to land anywhere from suspended time to the full ask. The headline number matters less than the precedent. Korea's Financial Services Commission revoked Delio's Virtual Asset Service Provider registration in 2024, an unusually aggressive move that signaled regulators wanted the conduct prosecuted criminally rather than parked in civil court. A heavy sentence would tighten the line for every Korean platform offering yield-bearing or staking products, a market segment the FSC has flagged as systemically opaque since the Terra collapse. A light one would invite the read that Korean white-collar enforcement still pulls its punches against founders.