Comments Off on Samsung Employee Steals 8,474 Smartphones to Pay off Gambling Debt Mobile News, Samsung

Scandals, corruption, corporate fraud, and all kinds of criminal activity has been haunting Korean electronics giant Samsung a lot as of late. Back in February 2017 Samsung’s Vice Chairman and multi-billionaire Lee Jae-yong made all kinds of headlines for his suspected involvement in bribing South Korean President Park Geun-hye as well as embezzlement of funds.




Most recently, according to The Investor, a handicapped Samsung employee in a wheelchair has been arrested for stealing 8,474 smartphones between December 2014 and November 2016. It’s claimed that the disabled employee sold the phones for a whopping $711,743 USD (or 800 million won) to a second-hand phone retailer in order to pay off his gambling debt of 900 million won according to the police report.

We don’t currently know the employee’s full name, only that his surname is Lee. He began working for Samsung back in 2010 when the company was offering jobs to people who had disabilities. His job was to repair old phones which were then passed onto developers in order to help with studying for upgrades as well as new features for Samsung smartphones.

Although Samsung has strict security measures in place at their headquarters in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, which is where the crime took place, Lee was able to bypass the body scanner security check due to the fact that he was in a wheelchair.

Samsung first became suspicious when they found out some not-for-sale phones had been distributed in Vietnam. They decided to report the case back in December 2016.

We don’t know at this time exactly what penalty Lee will face, but it will likely be quite hefty. It would also be safe to say that after this incident it’s highly likely that Samsung will have much stiffer protocols put in place in regards to how they conduct their security checks when it comes to all employees including those who are in wheelchairs.

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