〈Case concerning whether an act of deception constituting fraud was established in a card loan〉

【Holding】

[1] The meaning of "act of deception" as an element of the crime of fraud / Whether an act that does not involve deception of a person may be punished as fraud (negative)

[2] In a case where the defendant was indicted on charges of defrauding card companies of loan proceeds on two occasions in total by deceiving the card companies through the method of applying for card loans via the card companies' applications installed on a mobile phone and having the loan proceeds remitted to the defendant's own account, despite having no intention or ability to duly repay the loans, the Court held that the defendant's act did not constitute fraud because it did not involve deception of a person

【Summary of Decision】

[1] An act of deception, as an element of the crime of fraud under Article 347 of the Criminal Act, means causing a person to fall into a mistake. Therefore, an act that does not involve deception of a person cannot be punished as fraud.

[2] In a case where the defendant was indicted on charges of defrauding card companies of a total of KRW 34,500,000 on two occasions in total by deceiving the card companies through the method of applying for card loans via the card companies' applications installed on a mobile phone and having the loan proceeds remitted to the defendant's own account, despite having no intention or ability to duly repay the loans, the Court held that, in light of the fact that, in order to obtain card loans from the card companies, the defendant used the card companies' applications installed on a mobile phone to enter information such as the purpose of funds, assets held, annual income, debts, fixed expenditures relative to annual income, and credit score, whereupon the loans were automatically processed by the computer system and the loan proceeds were remitted to the designated account, and there were no circumstances warranting a finding that employees of the card companies intervened in the series of processes for handling the loan applications, such as by verifying the loan applications or remitting the loan proceeds, so the defendant could not be regarded as having deceived a person, such as an employee of the card companies, in the course of obtaining the loans, the defendant's act did not constitute fraud because it did not involve deception of a person; and therefore the lower court's judgment, which found the charged facts guilty on a different view, was erroneous in its misapprehension of legal principles concerning the act of deception in the crime of fraud.

【Referenced Statutes】

[1] Article 347 of the Criminal Act [2] Article 347(1) of the Criminal Act

【Referenced Precedents】

[1] Supreme Court Decision 83Do2995, February 14, 1984 (Gong1984, 475)
Supreme Court en banc Decision 2016Do13362, February 16, 2017 (Gong2017Sang, 673)
Supreme Court Decision 2017Do8449, September 26, 2017 (Gong2017Ha, 2147)
Supreme Court Decision 2019Do14960, February 27, 2020

(Source: Supreme Court Decision 2024Do18441, March 27, 2025 | Judicial Information Disclosure Portal, Precedents)