A sign of the times

fraud skyrockets in

Japan

'It's me!' fraud rears head again / July seeing 60% rise in bank transfer scams including resurgent fake calls

The Yomiuri Shimbun
The first 13 days of July saw a surge in the number of bank transfer scams in Tokyo, bucking the major downward trend of recent months, according to a Metropolitan Police Department report.
The MPD reported 65 cases between July 1 and Monday.
The monthly average of all remittance-related fraud this year has been 92 cases. Should such frauds continue at the same rate this month, July's figure would be about 150--about 60 percent higher than the monthly average so far this year.
Notable is the increase in the number of "It's me calling" scams, in which criminals deceive elderly people by pretending to be a relative and asking them to remit money, with explanations such as "I've lost money on the stock exchange."
Such methods are believed to be similar to those mainly used around 2003, techniques that criminals have used less frequently in recent years.
Members of criminal groups who were arrested around that time and had been serving prison terms have now been released. The MPD is strengthening its measures to tackle this kind of crime as it believes the same groups could be back in operation. ( learn more at )