A serving police officer has been indicted on charges of leaking personal information about a voice phishing suspect to an acquaintance and accomplices.
The Daejeon District Prosecutors Office — now operating as the Daejeon Public Prosecution Office — indicted last month a police lieutenant identified only as A on charges of violating the Personal Information Protection Act and disclosing official secrets, according to legal sources Monday.
A is accused of accessing "Pol-Johoe," the Korean National Police Agency's internal database, in April and looking up the identity of a specific voice phishing suspect, then leaking a photo of the driver's license search screen and the suspect's wanted status to an acquaintance identified as B.
B had conspired with his nephew to ask A to obtain the information. The nephew was an accomplice of the voice phishing suspect whose records were searched.
A initially claimed he had been on close personal terms with B and was unaware that the person he looked up was a voice phishing suspect.
Prosecutors, who took over the case from police, reviewed communication records between A and B as well as messages B had sent to the accomplices, and determined that A had known of the relationship between the parties.
Investigators had initially believed only the driver's license photo had been leaked, but a supplementary investigation revealed that A had also disclosed the suspect's wanted status to B.
mss@heraldcorp.com
