OSAKA (TR) – A woman working at a parlor in an Osaka City entertainment district has recounted a harrowing ordeal of being kidnapped and trafficked by international crime syndicates after traveling to Cambodia for what she believed was a highly lucrative job.
The woman, aged in her 20s, tells evening tabloid Nikkan Gendai (Aug. 11) she was lured by the promise of earning 8 million yen for just five days of work. Having previously traveled to Cambodia for work through the same parlor’s network, she let her guard down.
“I thought it would be fine since I knew the parlor and the route,” she said. “I was completely at ease.”
However, her illusions were shattered the moment she landed. Instead of being taken to a luxury hotel, she was driven to a heavily guarded hideout operated by the Chinese mafia.
“When I got out of the car, I was surrounded by intimidating men,” she recalled. “The blood drained from my face. They forcibly took my smartphone and passport and locked me in a dim room. I was trembling with fear.”
Mistress for one week
The woman was quickly sold to a local base run by a Japanese tokushu sagi crime syndicate. The men ordered her to work as a kakeko (caller) to defraud victims over the telephone back in Japan.
When she desperately refused, she was deemed “useless inventory” and passed around to other syndicates. During one of the transfers, she was given a chilling ultimatum by her captors: “If you don’t work as a caller, we’ll sell your ‘body parts’ on the underground market. Choose right now.”
Driven to the brink of despair, she pleaded in tears to a syndicate boss, explaining she had been deceived into coming to the country. The boss took pity on her, stating that if she had been tricked, there was “room for sympathy” and offered to sell her to a “good buyer.”
Her buyer turned out to be a wealthy Chinese man. The condition for her release was to serve as his mistress for one week.
After fulfilling the week-long arrangement, A-ko was given back her passport, her smartphone, and a flight ticket to Japan. She escaped with her life, but the promised 8 million yen was never paid.
Lucky to be alive
The woman considers herself remarkably lucky to be alive, noting that the dark underworld of international dispatch work has swallowed up others entirely. “I have several friends who went overseas for work and suddenly lost all contact. I thought human trafficking only happened in the movies, but it is real,” she said.
Authorities continue to warn youths against overseas job offers promising high payouts, noting they are often traps set by international crime rings to acquire disposable pawns for fraud networks.
Despite surviving a nightmare that nearly cost her her life or her organs, the lure of fast money appears hard to shake. At the conclusion of her interview, she casually remarked: “But I’m going to Thailand next month, actually.”
