OSAKA (TR) – On March 7, 2024, a suitcase containing a total of more than 1 billion yen in bills was handed over to a young man claiming to be a representative of a real estate company in Osaka City.
But there was one problem: He wasn’t a representative of the company.
In a so-called “land fraud” case, a person pretends to be the owner, buys and sells a property without permission and winds up pocketing large amounts of money.
Eight years ago, such an incident happened in downtown Tokyo several years ago whereby a major housing manufacturer was defrauded out of 5.5 billion yen.
And now, according to NHK (June 24), a similar incident has taken place in Osaka — a wild tale of imposters and fakery over properties in a highly desirable part of Japan’s third biggest city.
Forged driver’s licenses
All told, the amount lost by two companies was over 1.4 billion yen. Two suspects arrested on suspicion of fraud and other crimes are company executive Hiroshi Fukuda, 53, of Higashiosaka City, and 24-year-old Ryohei Kume.
Between February and March of last year, the pair are suspected of impersonating the owners of three land plots and buildings in Osaka’s downtown Minami area, signing sales contracts with two real estate companies and defrauding them out of a total of approximately 1.45 billion yen.
The land and buildings were owned by a company whose president is a woman in her 70s. The pair is suspected of applying for false corporate registrations using forged driver’s licenses of the woman and other documents to make it appear that president had changed.
Police have also arrested a woman in her 60s who was involved in applying for the false registrations along with the pair. Another woman in her 70s is undergoing questioning on a voluntary basis.
“Key was lost”
The incident came to light when five representatives from the defrauded company visited the property in mid-March last year.
On that day, the male manager of the building found that the building’s locks wouldn’t open. When he went to check on the situation, he discovered that the entrance lock had been replaced without the permission.
Shortly thereafter, five unknown men from the defrauded company came down the stairs.
When asked about the change to the locks and keys, one of the five said, “I’ve already paid. I heard from the seller that the key was lost, so I replaced it.”
Stunned, the manager immediately contacted the president of the company that actually owns the property.
“I don’t remember selling it,” the president said. “I want you to call the police because it might be a real estate fraudster.”
“I had nowhere to vent my anger”
In an interview, the manager told NHK, “I didn’t know what was going on and I couldn’t keep up. The person who said he bought the property said he was planning to demolish the building. So, if we hadn’t run into each other, it would have been a big problem.”
Meanwhile, the president of the company that owns the property also revealed in an interview with NHK that she had noticed something strange as early as February of last year.
When she had a judicial scrivener check the company’s registration for another reason, she discovered that the “CEO” column had been changed to a person named “Kume” without her knowledge.
She rushed to the ward office and the Legal Affairs Bureau to ask to see the documents used in the registration application, but they refused to show them because they were personal information.
After that, she started receiving inquiries from multiple real estate companies about properties she owned.
The president said, “Even when I explained to the Legal Affairs Bureau that the registration was fake, they didn’t believe me because they said that ‘real documents were submitted,’ and I ended up spending a lot of time and money in a civil lawsuit. I had nowhere to vent my anger.”
Fake I.O.U.
According to investigators and civil trial documents, the suspects first created a fake I.O.U. stating that the woman who serves as the president had borrowed money from the suspects.
They are suspected of presenting this to the ward office and obtaining a copy of the president’s resident registration card while posing as a creditor.
The Basic Resident Registration Act allows local governments to provide copies of the debtor’s resident registration card and other documents when the request is deemed appropriate for the purpose of collecting debts. Police believe this system was abused.
The suspects are believed to have used a photo of the second woman, the one in her 70s, to forge a driver’s license of the president. They also prepared false minutes of an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders stating that Kume had replaced her as the president.
They are suspected of then applying to the Legal Affairs Bureau to change the corporate registration.
“Just sell the real estate”
With Kume posing as the president of the company that owned the real estate, he and Fukuda negotiated the sale with two real estate companies last March.
According to investigators, the negotiations took place at the office of one of the parties, with around 10 people in attendance, including a judicial scrivener and a broker.
Kume said that the real owner, the company president in her 70s, was his “aunt.” he explained the reason for selling by saying, “I wanted to start a business, and when I talked to my aunt about it, she told me, ‘Just sell the real estate and raise the funds.'”
The contract was quickly concluded. Most of the 1.45 billion yen was paid in cash a few days later, except for a deposit of 50 million yen. The cash is believed to have been exchanged in suitcases.
According to investigators, Fukuda is believed to have been the ringleader and given instructions to Kume to play the role of president.
During questioning, Fukuda said, “My share was more than 100 million yen.” Police believe he provided funds to Kume and are investigating the flow of the money. However, Fukuda also made statements to police to suggest there were other people above him who were involved.
According to a person involved in the investigation, Kume is thought to have participated in the crime because he owed several million yen due to wagers at internet casinos and other recreations. He traveled to Thailand immediately after the incident and stayed there for about one month.
Property boom
“Tokyo Swindlers” was a series focusing on land fraud that plays on streaming site Netflix. The show focused on tales of a land fraudsters known as jimenshi.
As the aforementioned case reveals, Osaka is also ripe for such scams — and there few in the industry are surprised given the frothy market.
Although the buildings in Minami are more than 50 years old, the land parcels beneath them are located in a prime location, about a 10-minute walk from Namba Station on the Osaka Metro.
The Minami are has recently seen particularly active real estate transactions within the prefecture. According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism’s “Land Price Public Notice,” land prices in the area have risen by more than 20 percent in some areas compared to last year. Based on the notice, the Minami area has six of the top 10 most expensive locations in Osaka City.
The main factors are said to be this year’s Osaka-Kansai Expo and the surge in foreign tourists over the past few years.
As a result, there is high demand for restaurants, hotels and private lodgings. Further bolstering demand in the real estate market is that Osaka is generally cheaper than Tokyo.
“With real estate prices in Tokyo remaining high, real estate in Minami is very attractive to investors,” said Matsunaga Akira, president of the Osaka Prefecture Association of Real Estate Appraisers. “When properties are put up for sale, they are traded at the asking price, and there is even growing demand for properties away from the center [of the city].”
In the midst of this, some real estate agents last year heard that the three properties in the aforementioned fraud case were being put up for sale together.
According to one real estate agency, although the prices were by no means cheap, the good location meant that there would be demand from buyers. However, the agency became suspicious as the source of the information was unclear, and decided not to get involved in the transaction.
The president of that real estate agency told NHK, “I learned about the case on the news and immediately knew they were one and the same. In the real estate industry, there is a strong belief that the less information there is, the more valuable it is, and transactions are often made between individuals based on information that is passed on by hand. This makes it easy for fraudsters to take advantage. If they make one wrong move, it may be difficult for even real estate professionals to detect it.”
No business cards exchanged
NHK also tracked down a real estate industry insider who said he had unsuccessfully negotiated a deal with Fukuda for the same properties last year.
The insider said, “Negotiations are usually held in an office or other place, but Fukuda said, ‘Not at a company.’ We suggested a hotel, but he refused, saying, ‘We don’t want to be seen because we’re in the middle of a dispute,’ so we ended up at a private lodging. He also suggested staying in his car, so we thought he was really worried about something.”
On the appointed day, the person in question met Fukuda and Kume, again claiming to be the owner of the property, at the entrance to the private lodging.
Perhaps crucially, no business cards were exchanged.
According to the source, Kume seemed nervous, and as soon as his identity was confirmed with his driver’s license, he returned to his car, which was parked nearby.
After that, Fukuda and several other buyers, including the person in question, entered the room and sat on the sofa and bed, respectively, to continue the negotiations.
Fukuda explained that he was “managing the owner’s finances” and asked for a total of 550 million yen for the three properties.
There were some unusual aspects to the deal, such as refusing to prospective buyers to view the properties and demanding that a deposit of 50 million yen be paid on the same day, but the source believed his story and began drawing up a contract, believing the claim that there were some special circumstance involved, including a “family dispute.”
“Dignified and calm”
When asked about his impression of Fukuda during the negotiations, he said, “He was dignified and calm. He answered all of our questions 100 percent.”
However, the source said that his explanations were too detailed for someone who was not the owner of the properties. The source then gradually began to feel uneasy.
In the end, the contract was put on hold that day due to lack of completion of documents. The next day, Fukuda contacted the owner. He said, “I have already found a buyer, so I will decline.” They then lost contact.
The source recalled, “We think the suspects were negotiating with multiple companies at the same time. They became cautious in the end because they felt something was off about the explanation, but when they found out it was a fraud case they were relieved that they didn’t have to hand over any money.”
