Aichi prefectural police said on Thursday that a woman in her 50s, a company executive in Nagoya's Showa Ward, was defrauded of about ¥300 million in cash by scammers posing as police officers. Police are investigating the case as a special fraud — a category covering phone and social media scams that target ordinary people.
According to the prefectural police, a caller claiming to be a financial institution employee phoned the woman's home on October 3 and steered her to a social media service that keeps messages private. Men who identified themselves as a police officer and a prosecutor then told her they needed to check whether money from money laundering had entered her account.
Between October 23 and 30, she transferred cash to two bank accounts held in the names of corporations, in three transfers in total. A family member noticed the unusual transfers and consulted the prefectural police, which is how the fraud came to light.
Japanese fraud gangs frequently pose as police and prosecutors, and the script depends on the target accepting that an officer's instruction should be followed without question. The sums demanded rise as the caller moves the target from a bank employee to an officer to a prosecutor.