EHIME (TR) – Ehime Prefectural Police revealed on Monday that a woman here has been swindled out of a record 1.2 billion yen, reports the Yomiuri Shimbun (Apr. 6).
The crime was carried out by a ring conducting tokushu sagi, or specialized fraud, where a caller on the telephone impersonates an authority figure or a relative and deceives them.
In this case, the victim was an 80-year-old woman living in the prefecture. According to the police, in October of last year, she received a phone call claiming her health insurance card was being used fraudulently.
A man claiming to be a police officer then approached her, saying he would help prove her innocence.
Between December 25 of last year and February, the woman repeatedly made eight transfers of up to 200 million yen each at a financial institution in the prefecture, ultimately losing approximately 1.2 billion yen in total.
The woman reportedly presented a fictitious land and building sales contract, received from the fraud group, to a financial institution to facilitate the large transfers.
Cryptocurrency
Also on Monday, Osaka Prefectural Police announced that a woman in her 70s in Osaka Prefecture had been defrauded of approximately 300 million yen using a similar method between October and December of last year.
In the separate case, the woman was instructed over the telephone, “Deposit money as an asset investigation is necessary.” Between last December and February, she converted approximately 1.2 billion yen, which had been transferred to her account by the victim in Ehime, into cryptocurrency and sent it to a designated recipient in the ring in 100 separate transactions.
Osaka police believe the fraud ring used the Osaka victim’s account for money laundering.
