Suspected members of a burglary gang that has struck homes and shops around Japan said they could not leave the group after accepting lucrative job offers for the heists, investigative sources said.

The jobs were posted mainly on the “dark web,” where the illegal nature of the work was no secret.

An individual in the Philippines who goes by the name “Luffy” gave instructions for a number of the burglaries through people living in Japan, the sources said.

Police said the setup and arrangements for the robberies were similar to those in “special fraud” cases.

The fraud schemes also started with high-paying jobs offered online. Those who took the jobs ended up committing crimes, including defrauding targeted victims through phone calls.

Suspects arrested in these schemes said they were coerced into continuing the illegal activities, police said.

In the robbery cases, the job applicants were asked to take selfies with their driver’s licenses, the sources said.

Those who complied then received information about robbery plans through the Telegram communication app. The messages on the app disappeared after a certain period of time.

One suspect said that after he sent his information to the “recruiter,” a man he didn’t know visited his home.

The suspect said he felt that he was “under watch,” investigators said. He also said he was warned that people who quit in the middle of a mission were “treated badly.”

Another suspect was quoted by investigators as saying: “I gave them my identity and information about my family in advance. So even if I wanted to quit later, I couldn’t because they would hurt my family and workplace colleagues.”

A 26-year-old suspect living in Tokyo said the robbery he was involved in was well planned, and the organizers remained anonymous throughout, the sources said.

He said he found a job-related post on social media offering a daily payment of 1 million yen ($7,700), and he signed up because he needed the money, the sources said.

After the man contacted the recruiter, he was told this is a “tataki” job.

The man looked up “tataki” on the internet and learned the word was slang for “robbery.”

But he accepted the offer because of the high pay.

He then received instructions from the unnamed recruiter to meet up with other members, arrange rental cars, scope out the targeted site and decide when to carry out the robbery.

He said he followed the instructions, the sources said.

According to investigators, five men aged between 23 and 37 were brought together for a home robbery in Iwakuni, Yamaguchi Prefecture, in November.

They came from Hokkaido, Tochigi, Tokyo and Aichi prefectures, and were given specific roles, including the actual burglars, getaway driver, lookout and contact for high-ranking members, according to court documents.

A resident in his 60s was assaulted at the house and bound with zip ties.

Luffy, which is the name of the main protagonist in the pirate manga series “One Piece,” is believed to have given instructions for the Iwakuni burglary.

He also suspected of involvement in the robbery at a watch store in Kyoto in May last year.

A 45-year-old woman living in Gifu Prefecture admitted to joining the perpetrators for that heist by accepting an online job offer that promised “several million yen at one time,” the sources said.

She said her role was to put the store’s watches in a backpack and take them away. But she said another person stole the watches from her, and she was never paid for the job.

The woman was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison.

A robbery at a house in Inagi, western Tokyo, in October last year is also believed to have been arranged by Luffy.

The Metropolitan Police Department on Jan. 26 said seven men aged between 23 and 37 have been arrested in the case. They were apparently hired through a shady online job site and did not know each other before robbery, police said.

On Jan. 19, several men are believed to have burglarized a house in Komae, a city in western Tokyo. Kinuyo Oshio, 90, a resident of the house, was killed in the home invasion.

Luffy has been connected to this murder-robbery case, the sources said.