TOKYO (TR) – Law enforcement on Tuesday arrested a former member of the bosozoku gang Kanto Rengo flight from Bangkok, Thailand to Japan. He is believed to be the head of a Cambodia-based fraud ring, reports Nippon News Network (Apr. 8).
According to police, Tetsuya Yamaguchi, 46, headed a ring that carried out tokushu sagi, meaning specialized fraud. Perpetrators of this crime target a victim over the telephone and impersonate an authority figure or relative to defraud money from them.
According to investigators, Yamaguchi is suspected of making a false phone call to an elderly woman living in Osaka Prefecture in September 2022, claiming that she had a refund for medical expenses and defrauding her of about 300,000 yen in cash.
In addition to running the ring, Yamaguchi, who also uses the surname Tomizawa, also runs a Japanese restaurant that delivers lunch boxes to a separate fraud ring.
Kanto Rengo was a bosozoku motorcycle gang. It dissolved in 2003.
According to Thai police, Yamaguchi is believed to have been laundering money defrauded in the fraud ring through the buying and selling of art on a web site. He is believed to have set up the site himself.
Earlier on Tuesday, a reporter asked Yamaguchi as he being transferred from a Thai immigration facility to the airport whether he was a leader of the tokushu sagi group. He replied, “I’m not completely unrelated, but I’m not a leader. I just provided the lunch boxes.”
Law enforcement in Japan plan to transfer Yamaguchi to a police station for a full interrogation.
Cambodia and Vietnam
So far, more than 30 Japanese men have been arrested in relation to fraud rings in Southeast Asia. Multiple rings have already been uncovered in Cambodia and Vietnam.
The total amount lost through these rings is estimated to be at least several billion yen. The investigation into Yamaguchi and his ring is ongoing.
