JAPAN TIMES




 

Police from Saitama and other prefectures have arrested four Japanese men transferred from the Philippines to Japan for allegedly being involved in a fraud case.

The men, arrested Monday, are believed to be members of a group based in an apartment in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh that engaged in telephone or other scams classified as special fraud in Japan. Jun Kiyohara, 30, one of the arrested men, was likely in charge of the base of operations.
The four had been taken into custody by Philippine authorities.

According to the Saitama Prefectural Police department, the group is believed to be involved in 110 special fraud cases in 29 prefectures, which caused victims to lose a total of ¥1 billion.

Based partly on analyses of seized materials, the police believe that the total damage from the group reaches some ¥3 billion.

A joint investigation team of the Saitama and eight other prefectural police departments had already arrested 29 individuals believed to be members of the group, including 25 taken into custody by Cambodian authorities in September last year. Police are still on the hunt for three individuals.

The four men arrested Monday had fled the Phnom Penh base before it was raided by the Cambodian authorities.

In July last year, the four allegedly pretended to be nursing facility staff and phoned a woman in her 80s in Omachi, Nagano Prefecture, tricking her into sending ¥2.75 million in cash in a package as what they claimed to be fees to avoid criminal charges.

The woman also sent cash in similar ways more than once, meaning that she was likely cheated out of over ¥30 million in total, according to police.