TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police have arrested a dentists and four others for allegedly misusing the health insurance cards of 64 international students to defraud the government of the city of Nagoya and other municipalities of medical fees, despite not actually providing dental treatment.
In early June of last year, dentist Akira Oishi, 61, Akihiro Mizutani, the 35-year-old director of an association that dispatches foreigners, and three others allegedly defrauded the city of Nagoya and other areas out of approximately 1.65 million yen.
According to NHK (Oct. 2), police said that the suspects used the health insurance cards of 64 international students, including a Nepalese national, and falsely claimed medical fees under the pretense of providing “dental treatment” at a dental clinic in Edogawa Ward.
Police did not reveal whether the suspects admit to allegations of fraud.
Mizutani instructed a Japanese language school in Aichi Prefecture with which he has a business partnership to “gather students by offering free dental checkups.” Later, when Oishi and his associates provided free checkups for international students and technical intern trainees, they fraudulently obtained personal information from the health insurance cards.
Oishi, who lives in Narita City, Chiba, and his accomplices misused that information to claim medical fees for services that they did not actually provide.
Police believe the crime is broader in scope than the results of the initial investigation, saying it is likely that the suspects used the cards of at least 200 foreigners to collect at least 20 million yen since October of last year.
Second time around
The arrest is not the first for Oishi. In 2017, police accused him and an accomplice, dentist Ryota Sekiguchi, of swindling the government of Shinjuku Ward out of 120,000 yen
They are said to have misused the health insurance card numbers of women who visited the dental clinic run by Sekiguchi to make fraudulent claims.
According to the police, the pair admitted to the charges. Oishi said, “I started making fraudulent claims about nine years ago. I used the money I defrauded to repay my debts.”
Based on bank account records, Kanagawa Prefectural Police believed that at least 600 million yen in medical fees was defrauded over the past seven years.
