Photo/Illutration A room in an apartment in Phnom Penh that served as the base for a fraud group. Photo taken Oct. 25 (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

A record 69 Japanese fraud suspects operating overseas were arrested by Japanese police in 2023 following extradition proceedings involving four Asian countries, the National Police Agency said.

In addition to the Philippines, where a group allegedly orchestrated a string of violent home robberies across Japan, local authorities uncovered fraud groups operating in Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand.

The NPA said there had been a growing trend in recent years for Japanese gangs to base their fraud operations elsewhere in Asia due to strengthened detection in Japan. It added that this year witnessed a marked increase in raids, seizures and arrests after suspects were deported back to Japan.

Local authorities in the Philippines and three other Asian countries uncovered at least six locations where Japanese nationals and their accomplices were detained over fraudulent activities in Japan, according to the NPA and other sources.

They were behind telephone scams in Japan to defraud senior citizens of their savings and strip their bank accounts, the sources added. 

From February to December this year, police in six prefectures, including Tokyo, arrested a total of 69 men and women on suspicion of fraud and theft following extradition proceedings.

Twenty-eight arrests were made by the Metropolitan Police Department in Tokyo. There were also 28 arrests by Saitama prefectural police and six by Osaka authorities, along with three in Saga, two in Aichi and two in Gifu.

The fraud group in the Philippines believed to be behind violent robberies in Japan operated in an abandoned hotel in Manila, which local authorities uncovered in November 2019.

That led to 36 Japanese nationals being detained in the Philippines, resulting in their extradition and arrest by Tokyo police from 2020 to 2021.

This year, four leaders of the gang, including the alleged ringleader, Kiyoto Imamura, 39, who used the name “Luffy,” and Yuki Watanabe, 39, were extradited and arrested. They are suspected of having masterminded the series of robberies.

Nineteen suspects found operating at a base uncovered in Cambodia in January were also extradited to Japan and arrested by Tokyo police.

Japanese fraudsters were first found to be operating overseas when authorities in 2010 came across a racket based in Fujian, China. That led to other crackdowns in China as well as Thailand.

This year has been notable for the large number of seizures and the number of Japanese detained, which is believed to be the highest to date.

Information-sharing between Japan and other countries gained momentum due to the “Luffy” case, where extreme violence was used to extract money from victims personally selected by Imamura or Watanabe. As a result, each country is now proactively responding to the situation, an NPA official said.

The minimal time difference with Japan is a key factor behind gangs setting up bases in other Asian countries, the NPA said. Other benefits include cheap access to a base from which to operate along with a sound telecommunications environment for smartphones and other devices.

The NPA is strengthening its cooperation with foreign investigative agencies in the belief there are other active fraud groups based overseas that have not yet been detected.

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