Korean arrested after Gangnam-style spending spree [1]

Agence France-Presse | 02/22/2013 1:39 PM

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SEOUL - A South Korean man who embezzled more than $4.0 million dollars and had plastic surgery to evade capture, has been arrested after a hostess bar spending spree in Seoul's upmarket Gangnam district.

The 33-year-old, identified as Yoon, was finally tracked down after two of his accomplices were arrested, police said Friday.

The head of the accounting department at a semi-conductor manufacturer, Yoon transferred 4.7 billion won ($4.3 million) of company funds to a series of secret bank accounts, police said.

Feigning a family emergency, he left the company in early January, withdrew much of the cash, and went on a 10-day binge in Gangnam, spending hundreds of millions of won in high-class hostess bars and buying a Mercedes-Benz sedan.

Worried that he might be spotted, Yoon went to the southern city of Gwangju where he had extensive plastic surgery to assume a new identity.

He then returned to his high-spending ways and hostess bars, but the police eventually caught up with him near Gwangju on Wednesday following a tip-off from his detained accomplices.

Yoon was "a totally different person" when he was take into custody, a police spokeswoman in Asan told AFP.

"He'd had a nose and eye job, and his face had changed drastically," the spokeswoman said.

The Gangnam district has gained recent worldwide fame due to South Korean rapper Psy's Gangnam Style" -- a video parodying the trendy Seoul area which became the first YouTube upload to break a billion views.

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