crime

Tokyo police survey bank transfer scam victims

15 Comments

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has carried out its first ever survey of victims of bank transfer fraud.

The scam, known in Japanese as "ore ore sagi," usually involves a fraudster contacting a vulnerable, elderly person and posing as a family member in need of money. The money is sent to a bank account and the fraudster disappears before the family discovers the deception.

Between October and December of last year, police carried out a survey of victims and discovered that in 323 cases, around 75% of fraudsters posed as the victim's son, TBS reported. In 14% of cases, the perpetrator claimed to be the victim's grandson.

In addition, police revealed that 70% of victims lived alone or with their spouses and had never discussed the bank transfer fraud phenomenon with their families. Out of the 340 reported cases of bank transfer scams in the capital so far this year, police say the average amount stolen was 3 million yen, TBS reported.

Police are urging families to be on guard and to choose a secret word to help prevent elderly relatives from becoming victims.

© Japan Today

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15 Comments
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famlies in japan - please talk to each other. that is the biggest problem from where i sit - little to no communication.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

About time

2 ( +2 / -0 )

For what? That the PA survey the victims? It's more than a bit late as I see it. Instead of running public service announcements about "aisatsu" try doing a few of these during the daytime hours when the elderly are watching NHK.

@Yaburu

Do you know what a sarcastic comment is? "about time" usually implies that they are waaaay late on this.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Japan you are not as isolated as you once were. This is occurring all around the world, the names of the criminals only change.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

@ Sasoriza

What a shame granny cut her off! Maybe the "shock" of hearing the real granddaughter would have deterred the perpetrator from trying the same trick on other grannies.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

When ya realize that someone is trying to scam ya, play along as long as possible, writing down as much info as ya can, like the caller ID, the bank transfer info, etc. Pretending to go thru with it. Then once the scammer hangs up and lets ya do whatever he expected ya to do, instead call the police and give them all the info ya gathered. And hopefully, the police can set up a trap and arrest the scammer, hahaha. Since who knows how many other people the scammer have already scammed and what other network of scammers are involved.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Did these types of scams just start occuring recently or has this been a long standing phenomena in Japan? The reason I ask is that maybe the criminal element is advancing faster than the rest of the Japanese society, in terms of being able to do what was unthinkable in the past. From what I can gather, there used to be somewhat of a code among the criminals that they mainly preyed on those who dealt with them in their "world" so to speak, and didn't really scam the general public too much outside of politics, and the general public pretty much knew this and didn't expect to become involved with the shady types.

But now, the times have changed and is is that the rest of society doesn't believe that the criminal element would actually do this to people, or is it that the criminal element figures that the older generation is particularly naive and will pull these scams on them without any remorse.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

70% of victims lived alone or with their spouses

So 30% lived with their son's family?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Knowing that this type of scam occurs- bank officials should put in place stricter policies/procedures.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

If you cannot recognise your own children's voices, or lack sufficient faculties to question 'out of the blue' requests for money and do simple checks to make sure that you aren't being defrauded, better not to be responsible for control of your own money, surely?

It is really hard to understand why people should fall for this particular scam unless they are really vulnerable and confused.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

For goodness sakes, this isn't the first survey.

Also, NHK, and the other TV and radio stations, often do stories to try to educate people.

I think one problem is that some of these old people are already losing their faculties. They're at that difficult time when the younger family members should probably be taking control of their parents' financial afffairs. But that can be very distressing for the older people.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

slow. They need to get the banks too. Make the banks ask a battery of question before releasing the large amounts of money. Or force banks to give like pamphlets that warn about these types of scams at the time of withdrawal. I see tons of ads outside on some walls in convenience stores but i dont see so many IN the banks.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Only sons and grandsons? Interesting, last time I went back to my home country, somebody called my Granny pretending to be " your granddaughter" . Granny cut her just as I was reaching to have one-in-a-lifetime conversation with "me".

0 ( +1 / -1 )

About time

For what? That the PA survey the victims? It's more than a bit late as I see it.

Instead of running public service announcements about "aisatsu" try doing a few of these during the daytime hours when the elderly are watching NHK.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

In addition, police revealed that 70% of victims lived alone or with their spouses and had never discussed the bank transfer fraud phenomenon with their families.

Never discussed it even though it has been on the news and in the papers for years... The lack of communication in society is the issue here, not these scams.

-4 ( +1 / -5 )

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