TOKYO (TR) – As a part of a crackdown on bait-and-switch prostitution scams taking place in the Kabukicho red-light district, Tokyo Metropolitan Police have arrested a 27-year-old woman for extorting a potential customer, reports TV Asahi (Nov. 13).
In September, Miho Sasaki allegedly threatened a male office worker in his 20s into paying a “cancellation fee” of 55,000 yen.
Just prior to the incident, a street tout had lured the victim by handing him a photo of a prostitute who was available at a nearby rental accommodation.
At the accommodation, the suspect, who was not the same person depicted in the picture, told the victim that the price to receive a sex service was 60,000 yen. She also informed the victim that he could cancel the arrangement for 55,000 yen.
The suspect then took the victim to a nearby convenience to withdraw the cancellation fee from an automatic-teller machine.
At the end of last month, police arrested Yukie Shimoyachi for perpetuating a similar scam at the same rental accommodation.
Between January and September, police have received at least 450 complaints from victims of scams involving the use of rental accommodations. Of that total, 110 of the cases, with an accumulated damage of six million yen, have involved the rental accommodation used by Sasaki and Shimoyachi, according to the Chunichi Shimbun (Nov. 14).