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When a laborer named Ahn was hired to dig up a Japanese apricot tree in a South Korean garlic patch, he also uprooted a secret stash of $10 million buried in the field.
Unearthing that secret has spawned a police investigation into the buried loot, a probe into $5 million more that is allegedly missing, and accusations that Ahn stole some of the missing money -- which may just be a tactic by the owner of the land to protect himself from the gangsters whose money he was hiding.
According to South Korean police and news reports, Ahn, 52, was hired in February to excavate the tree after the land was sold because the previous owner wanted his apricot tree after selling the land to a man named Lee. The reports do not identify any of the men's first names.
In digging up the tree, Ahn also pulled up a plastic box, which he discarded as junk unaware that it was stuffed with $270,000 in cash.
Two months later, Lee, 53, accused Ahn of stealing $620,000. Lee also delivered the ominous news that the money belonged to gangsters, sending Ahn straight to the police for protection and to declare his innocence, according to police reports.
Police soon descended on the garlic field in the village of Gimje, about 160 miles south of Seoul, and dug it up. On Monday, the cops found 27 plastic boxes packed with South Korean currency, the won, which totaled $10 million.
Buried Treasure Came From Illegal Online Gambling Operation Confronted with the buried treasure, Lee confessed that the money came from his brothers-in-law and the cash was the profits from their illegal Internet gambling site, police said.
The brothers-in-law, also both surnamed Lee, ran an illegal gambling website with a server based in Hong Kong from January 2008 to November 2009, when the police tracked down the website and put them out of business.
Identified by police to be in their 40s, the two Lee brothers had to find a safe hiding place to stash their cash profits of $10 million before going to jail, the police said. They first liquidated the slush fund into 50,000 won (about $45) notes and gave it to Lee little by little over a seven month period. The younger Lee brother was imprisoned in November 2009, while the older Lee brother is on the run.
Entrusted with the massive amount of cash, the brother-in-law and his wife at first kept the cash in their storage room and in their bedrooms. But there was so much money to hide that it was impossible to hide from visitors to their home, they told the police.
In May, they purchased the quarter acre field, buried the money there and planted a garlic filed above it, police reports allege.
Earlier this month, Lee allegedly dug up $360,000 to use for personal purposes, according to local reports. He took another $890,000 and spent some of it in his office and in his son's car.
$10 Million Buried in a Garlic Patch
As the release date of the imprisoned Lee approached -- he due to get out of jail next month -- the brother-in-law needed an excuse for the missing money, police reports state, promptly him to to accuse Ahn of stealing from the garlic field. Investigators estimate the gambling website's profit in 23 months in business at $15 million. The Lee brothers charged gamblers 12.3 percent commission fees. The police is now investigating the missing $5 million.
Tens of thousands of South Korean gamblers play on the illegal online gambling sites where there is no limit on the amount of bets per game. The system allows gamblers to create multiple identities as long as players have a mobile phone number. Their winnings are not subject to taxes. Restricting such websites is difficult, police say, because most of them open servers abroad, such as in Japan or in China. The operators shift domains every two to three weeks to avoid tracking by authorities.
ABC
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