On June 11, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and Chiba Prefectural Police arrested a fraud syndicate leader, Kazuki Suzuki, 48, unknown occupation, from Ichikawa City, Chiba Prefecture, and 25 other men and women on suspicion of scamming users of a women’s side-job website of cash in the form of membership fees. The suspects are believed to have scammed approximately 8,600 women across the country of a total of approximately 1.9 billion yen between January 2021 and September 2023 by offering them fictitious side jobs, saying that you get paid just to chat and give advice.
The other 25 men and women arrested were website operators and fake advisers.
According to the announcement, between July and September last year, the 26 people conspired to send false emails to a woman in her 40’s living in Tokyo, who had registered on the website “Supp0,” which they run, saying that she needed to become a regular member in order to receive a reward from the man she was consulting with, and made her remit a total of 407,000 yen in cash three times as membership processing fees. The suspects were arrested on May 10 and 11.
The suspects advertised on social media as “easy side jobs on your smartphone” and “just listen to men through email.”
The women who applied were asked to email a man for advice, but the person who they consulted was “fake,” arranged by the group, who contacted the women posing as a member.
The Tokyo Police Department believe that the suspects targeted women who were interested in taking on a second job online in the pandemic and set up several side job websites.
On June 10, the police rounded up 11 bases in five prefectures, including Tokyo, Chiba and Saitama. The Tokyo Police Department is investigating the situation as an “anonymous and fluid criminal group”‘ linked by social media.
In February, a woman in her 20’s from Nagasaki Prefecture registered on a website after seeing an advertisement on social media claiming that you could make money in a short period of time. She soon received a message from a man who said he was an executive at a company and single, saying he had trouble with his relationships with colleagues.
However, when she tried to give her contact details, she received a message from the operator saying that she couldn’t exchange contact details without becoming a full member, and she paid a total of approximately 300,000 yen several times for the cost of unlocking security to exchange personal information.
After being unable to provide contact details, the woman consulted a lawyer and said “I spent my saving in anticipation of a reward. I’d like a small refund,” she regretted.
