TOKYO (TR) – Thirteen Japanese men and women who are suspected members of a fraud ring operating from a base in Cambodia have been deported from the Southeast Asian nation and arrested by Tokyo Metropolitan Police, reports Fuji News Network (Jan. 14).
The suspects were believed to be a part of ring that specializes in tokushu sagi, which is a type of fraud carried out on the telephone by a caller impersonating an authority figure or a victim’s relative.
In October and November last year, the 13 men and women, including Saeki Mikimasa, 20, are suspected of working together to pose as a police officer from Miyagi Prefecture on the telephone with a woman in her 60s in Sagamihara City, Kanagawa Prefecture.
The caller falsely said that she needed to transfer money to a designated account as part of a banknote investigation, thereby defrauding her of 11 million yen in cash.
According to police, the 13 Japanese men and women were transferred from Cambodia to Japan on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The base in Bavet, a city in southeastern Cambodia, is believed to have been used to commit specialized fraud. In many cases, the perpetrators posed as police officers. The 13 arrested suspects were detained by local authorities at the base in early November.
Numerous computers and more than 100 mobile phones were seized from the base. Tokyo Metropolitan Police plan to question the 13 individuals and investigate the base’s operations.
Cambodia has seen a series of crackdowns on specialized fraud-related groups in recent years, with 16 Japanese nationals being detained at a facility in Sihanoukville in December last year.
