Actress Yoo Hye-jung’s daughter Seo Gyu-won has shared a cautionary tale about being scammed out of millions of won while running her online shopping mall. The story came out in an October 10 video on the mother-daughter YouTube channel, reports Sports Chosun.
Seo recalled that she took over a shopping mall at her mother’s suggestion, determined to revive it on her own. That’s when the calls came: firms promising to boost her shop’s search ranking through ads. She signed with one and paid several million won by credit card without suspicion.
It was only afterward that she sensed something was off. A quick Google search revealed the firm was a well-known scammer. Her heart was pounding, she said — the money was already gone.
That’s when her mother stepped in with a clever bluff. Yoo told the scammers they were filming and the whole process had been recorded on camera, asking whether they were fine with it being aired. Startled, the firm agreed to cancel — minus a 10 percent fee.
“My mom said to think of it as buying a life lesson cheap,” Seo said. Yoo married former baseball player Seo Yong-bin in 1999, gave birth to Gyu-won in 2000, and divorced in 2007. She later ran a clothing shop for 15 years.
