“This is prostitution,” wrote the office worker in a message to the woman after he followed her home to Tokyo and obtained her email address. “I’ll expose the whole thing to your family if you don’t pay me 500,000 yen.”
The office worker, Wataru Aoki, was eventually arrested, and Nikkan Gendai (Aug. 7) sees the incident as evidence of the increase in attempted extortion of participants in indecent endeavours.
In Nagoya, a 64-year-old male was arrested for threatening a man as he decamped from a love hotel. “I’ve got video showing evidence of your affair,” he threatened. “Give me 450,000 yen for the film.”
The National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan is seeing a surge in claims filed for fraud. Between August of 2011 and January of this year the office received a total of four complaints. Between February and March, the figure jumped to 334.
Fuzoku journalist Yukio Murakami says that scams involving sex are common, including the “office lady (OL) tail.”
“After an OL resigns from her office, she’ll be followed to she if she takes up part-time work at a sex club,” says Murakami, a specialist in such matters. “If discovered, she’ll be asked for her body or cash in exchange for keeping the information under wraps.”
The National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan reports of another incident in which a victim was threatened with the leak of information regarding the purchase of improperly censored porn DVDs.
Murakami says that video showing the theft of women’s underwear from a balcony might bring in between 300,000 and one million yen to an extortionist. Offering to delete a name from a list of purchasers of sex toys — often by unmarried career women — could be worth 40,000 yen.
A fake pregnancy is another method. “The woman will say it is fine for her partner to finish inside her during sex,” Murakami says. “But then he’ll get a threatening call from an unknown guy claiming to be the woman’s boyfriend who says his girl is pregnant.”
The tone will oftentimes be polite, the writer says of the typical threats: “It might continue with something like ‘May we receive 100,000 yen for the necessary abortion?'”
Source: “Mada mada aruzo! Eroi kyokatsu jiken saishin teguchi,” Nikkan Gendai (Aug. 8)
