Singer-actor Lee Seung-gi and actor Lee Da-in [Herald Pop]
Singer-actor Lee Seung-gi and actor Lee Da-in [Herald Pop]

The father of actor Lee Da-in and father-in-law of singer-actor Lee Seung-gi has been sentenced to prison and taken into custody on stock manipulation charges.

Seoul Southern District Court's Criminal Division 15, presided over by Chief Judge Noh Yu-kyung, on Tuesday sentenced the 59-year-old surnamed Lee — one of 13 defendants tried on charges including violations of the Capital Markets Act — to three years and six months in prison and a fine of 400 million won ($294,000). The court also ordered the forfeiture of about 125.5 million won.

Lee and his co-defendants were indicted on charges of inflating share prices to reap hundreds of billions of won in illicit gains by deceiving investors into believing that Kosdaq-listed companies were pursuing new high-technology ventures — known in market parlance as "pearls" — designed to boost their stock prices.

Between November 2022 and roughly a year later, they placed manipulative orders in Joongang Advanced Materials, a secondary battery materials company, driving its share price from 490 won to 5,850 won per share — more than a tenfold increase.

They also inflated the share price of Quantapia, a renewable energy company, by disclosing a fabricated investment commitment letter claiming that 100 billion won in investment had been confirmed, netting tens of billions of won in the process.

Lee also faced charges under the Attorney-at-Law Act after Quantapia's trading was suspended in February 2024. Prosecutors said he received 30 million won as an upfront payment from a former prosecution investigator, also surnamed Lee, aged 61, who claimed he could resolve the suspension, with a promised success fee of 1 billion won.

The court acquitted Lee on the Attorney-at-Law Act charge, however, ruling that while the receipt of money could be established, the circumstances were more consistent with passing the funds on to another defendant than with accepting them as payment for illicit lobbying.

The former investigator was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined 24 billion won, with an additional forfeiture order of about 6.01 billion won.

Lee Seung-gi married Lee Da-in, the daughter of actor Gyeon Mi-ri, in 2023. In April last year, after learning that his father-in-law had been additionally indicted for illegal conduct, Lee publicly announced he was cutting ties with his wife's family, saying the case had "damaged trust within the family to a degree that is difficult to recover from."


bbo@heraldcorp.com