Photo/Illutration A man who is allegedly part of a fraud ring and was arrested on an airplane is escorted at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on Nov. 8. (Shota Tomonaga)

Twenty-five Japanese who are suspected members of a fraud ring that ran a phone scam targeting a Japanese woman were arrested in midflight on Nov. 8 after being deported from Cambodia. 

The group is believed to have swindled hundreds of millions of yen from victims across Japan.

Nine prefectural police departments including Saitama, Hokkaido, Mie and Hyogo arrested the men aged between 20 and 42 on suspicion of defrauding the woman, who resides in Hokkaido and was 70 when the swindle occurred around August.

The men allegedly made calls to her from an apartment in Phnom Penh, which they used as a base, falsely claiming that she was in trouble over a nursing home admission. They conned her out of 450,000 yen ($3,000) in cash by saying it was for resolution fees, police said.

Investigators said the men instructed the woman to send the money to a vacant apartment in Tokyo. Police believe they have accomplices.

The men may have been confined in the apartment building in Phnom Penh, according to Japanese and Cambodian investigators. Some of them had also sought help from the Japanese Embassy in Phnom Penh, the investigators said.

When Cambodian authorities raided the apartment in September at the request of the Japanese side, some of the members’ passports were found in one room.

The nine prefectural police departments are investigating on suspicion that the men may have been recruited through shady and illegal part-time job listings posted online by the fraud group’s leaders.

In Cambodia, authorities have detained a series of fraud group suspects involving Japanese nationals this year.

In April, Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrested 19 Japanese who were taken into custody at a resort hotel in Cambodia on fraud charges.

In May, three more suspects were detained in Cambodia who were later arrested by Saga prefectural police.

An expert points to Cambodia’s lax immigration controls, which easily allows for long-term stays in the country.

“Thorough immigration control and domestic laws being strengthened are both needed,” said Wang Yunhai, a professor at Hitotsubashi University who specializes in the crime landscape in Asia.

(This article was written by Emiko Arimoto, Shun Noguchi and Shunichi Nimura.)

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