Press "Enter" to skip to content

Tokyo cops: Yakuza headed 100-member fraud ring

Ryosuke Akita
Ryosuke Akita of the Sumiyoshi-kai (Twitter)

TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police have arrested an organized crime member who headed a fraud ring that targeted the elderly in swindling hundreds of persons out of 1.2 billion yen, reports NHK (May 18).

In October of 2015, a woman aged in her 80s and living in Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture, was told over the telephone by a person falsely claiming to be her son that he needed money to pay compensation to a co-worker over an unwanted pregnancy.

The ring, headed by Ryosuke Akita, a 31-year-old member of the Sumiyoshi-kai, then obtained 3 million yen in cash from the woman.

According to police, the ring consists of at least 100 people. Over the past three years, the group has swindled about 200 persons, mostly elderly, across the nation out of more than 1.2 billion yen.

Police are now seeking to arrest about 60 other members of the ring.