Time's up for buyers of luxury watches who charged their purchases abroad and were paid a "reward" by a company that claims to resell the expensive goods in Japan. 

The company’s reported failure to transfer payments has left the duped buyers unable to pay off their massive credit card bills.

Some are burdened with credit card debts exceeding 30 million yen ($200,000), while others are collectively consulting with lawyers for advice.

A 37-year-old company employee residing in Kanagawa Prefecture is considering filing for personal bankruptcy after being hounded by her credit card company to pay a total of 18 million yen for her overseas purchases. 

In September 2022, while seeking a job, she found a listing on a major job search site for a part-time position buying jewelry abroad. She joined the company and earned up to 1.1 million yen a month.

“I still can’t believe that it was real,” the woman said. 

The recruitment for the dubious job that promised, “If you buy luxury watches abroad, you will be rewarded,” began after travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic relaxed.

A watch buying company in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward recruited buyers through the job search online website.

Those who applied were interviewed at an “office” in Tokyo.

Travel expenses were covered by the company. As “buyers,” those who passed the interview used their own credit cards to front the cost of watch purchases at stores overseas, and the money was transferred to their accounts upon their return to Japan.

The reward was set at 5 to 6 percent of the purchase price.

Since Nov. 27 last year, however, many buyers have been unable to pay their credit card bills due to the company’s failure to transfer money.

According to a survey conducted by one of the buyers burdened with a large debt, there were 41 purchasers with debts due to the company’s payment failure as of the end of January.

The total amount charged by credit card companies amounted to roughly 590 million yen.

Including those who claim to have offered a total of around 140 million yen to the company in the form of loans but have not received any repayment, at least 44 buyers have been involved in difficulties concerning the company.

According to multiple buyers, the job mainly involved traveling in a group of several people to Thailand and Hong Kong, where each traveler purchased luxury watches, such as Rolexes, each worth millions of yen, at designated stores using their credit cards.

They then sent images of the receipts and the cards to the instructor via LINE.

The instructor was a worker at the Shibuya Ward’s company that recruited the buyers, according to the travelers. 

The company had rarely failed to make payments and many buyers continued their buying trips to earn rewards.

Some received as much as 10 million yen in premiums, while others took out new credit cards to enable large transactions for more rewards and utilized more than 20 cards.

The number of buyers grew as word of mouth spread among those who had received the bounty.

The instructor told the buyers that the company “makes a profit by reselling the watches purchased overseas to Chinese tourists in Japan.”

However, the company sometimes processed payments even without seeing the watches the buyers purchased, according to some of the purchasers.

They said that the instructor told them “the company manages watches centrally.”

The Asahi Shimbun requested an interview with the company and its representative through emails and documents but did not receive a reply by the publication deadline.

The representative office of the company’s board directors declined to comment, saying, “We are unable to respond.”

Journalist Fumiaki Tada said that pursuing a criminal case becomes less likely when the company claims debt default under the Civil Law citing cases such as transactions occurring overseas and when paying buyers for purchases becomes impossible due to the company’s bankruptcy.

He added that even if buyers file a civil lawsuit, it’s unlikely that the company would have sufficient assets remaining to compensate them for damages.

Tada notes that the company’s use of a major job search site and conducting interviews “may have lent an air of credibility to the would-be buyers.”

(This article was written by Ryuichiro Fukuoka and Hiroshi Nakano.)