's former CEO has been sentenced to 7 years of prison for fraud and document forgery.





CEO Cho of her former label Martin Kyle was originally sentenced to 9 years of jail time, but the sentence was lowered to 7 years at his 2nd hearing. CEO Cho founded Martin Kyle for PPL (product placement) purposes in dramas and variety shows. In March 2012, he was introduced to a lawyer "A", and convinced "A" to invest funds in Martin Kyle.









However, at the end of 2013, A performed an audit of Martin Kyle and found that his money was used for other purposes, and CEO Cho was sued. The CEO denied all charges at first. However, it was revealed that CEO Cho used some of the 1.35 billion KRW ($1.2 million USD) to fund other companies he was running as well as his own living expenses, and was sentenced to 9 years of jail time. One of the accusations was that he took 300 million KRW ($272,000 USD) under the promise of scouting Clara in June 2013. A said, "Mr. Cho said if I gave him 300 million KRW, he would scout Clara from Galaxia Communications, so I gave him the money. However, I found out that he had not given all the money to Galaxia at once, but was paying 10 million KRW ($9,000 USD) per month."



However, in the second hearing, the court decided, "Before Martin Kyle received the 300 million KRW, they had already given Clara 300 million KRW to annul her contract with Galaxia, so it can not be seen as fraud." They also judged that he was not guilty of using the 350 million KRW ($317,000 USD) that he received by saying he would earn a large profit by working on the 'Goddess of Fire, Jung Yi' OST, because he did use the money for the right purposes. His sentence was reduced to 7 years at the 2nd hearing.





On the 7 years, the court explained, "He denies all accusations and does not show any remorse for his actions even though the victim's financial losses were not recovered. He even threatened the victim by saying he would reveal his secrets, so a strict punishment was unavoidable."







Do you think the punishment was fair under the circumstances?