TOKYO (TR) – With gold prices soaring, Japanese police are sounding the alarm over a surging fraud ring where scammers impersonate police officers to trick victims into buying gold bullion.
The brazen racket netted over 5.8 billion yen last year, reports NHK (July 13).
According to the National Police Agency (NPA), the fraudsters contact victims and stoke fear by telling them, “You are suspected of a crime, and we need to investigate your assets.”
The fake cops then pressure the bewildered victims into purchasing gold, falsely claiming that “buying gold will allow us to complete the investigation in a short period of time.”
The tactic has proven highly lucrative. Last year alone, victims across 35 prefectures were swindled out of roughly 5.8 billion yen by the phony investigators.
Cooperation
Anticipating that the skyrocketing value of gold will only encourage more of these scams, the NPA has formally requested cooperation from the gold trading industry to help stop the bleeding.
Police have provided dealers with a checklist of common behaviors exhibited by victims who are secretly acting on a scam group’s orders—such as attempting to buy gold without having a designated storage location for it. The NPA is urging merchants to immediately report to investigators if a customer fits the suspicious profile.
While hoping to curb the massive financial losses through industry cooperation, the NPA also issued a blunt warning to the general public regarding the scam: “Police officers will absolutely never force you to buy gold.”
