Photo/Illutration An illustration of Mai Watanabe on April 22 listening to the Nagoya District Court sentencing her to nine years in prison for fraud. (Drawing by Ai Fukushima)

NAGOYA--A woman who used the name “Itadakijoshi Riri-chan” (Riri the sugar baby) on social media and sold manuals on how to scam older men was sentenced to nine years in prison for fraud.

The Nagoya District Court on April 22 found Mai Watanabe, 25, guilty of defrauding three men out of a total of 150 million yen ($970,000) between March 2021 and August 2023 by telling them lies, such as, “I need money to cut ties with my parents.”

The court said Watanabe “committed the crime in order to contribute to the sales of her favorite hosts, and that her criminal responsibility is quite serious.”

She was also ordered to pay a fine of 8 million yen.

Prosecutors had sought a 13-year prison term and a 12-million-yen fine.

The court said Watanabe’s method of repeatedly defrauding the victims by making them fall in love with her was “a cunning crime that took advantage of their goodwill.”

The ruling said the consequences were serious because some of the victims lost almost all of their assets.

Watanabe was also accused of selling manuals on the internet on how to swindle money from older lonely men.

One buyer, a 21-year-old woman who lives in Nagoya, has been convicted of fraudulently gaining about 10 million yen through the instructions.

The fact that “Watanabe sold manuals and encouraged others to commit similar crimes was malicious,” the court said.

‘BE MY ACE’

Since January, Watanabe has given several interviews to The Asahi Shimbun about how she ended up at a detention facility in Nagoya.

She said she was 20 years old when an older colleague at a cellphone store where she worked took her to a host club in the Kabukicho district of Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward. There, a host asked her to “be my ace.”

Watanabe said she grew up in a violent household, and that she was belittled in elementary and junior high school because of her atopic dermatitis.

The host’s request for help to become the top sales-getter at the club provided purpose in her life, she said.

“The goal of my host became my goal,” she said. “I wanted to be the person who could be the most helpful to someone.”

Watanabe quit her job and started working in “fuzoku” sex-related businesses to gain money for the host. She said she received extra cash from her customers by giving them fake sob stories, such as, “I need money to pay off my debts.”

Around March 2021, when she was 22, she met Hiroshi Tanaka, 26, a host who went by the name Ayumu Kamiya at a club in Kabukicho.

She started “reserving” his services. He did not look or dress like a host, and she thought he would show her “a different world.”

Watanabe said she escalated her money-making scams to push Tanaka to the top rank at the club. She said she moved to another sex-related operation, and through just one lie, she gained tens of millions of yen.

But she said she sensed she was perpetrating fraud and destroying victims’ lives. To escape that reality, she said she overdosed on prescription drugs.

She also tried to convince herself that she was filling a void in the victims’ lives in exchange for money, she said.

Watanabe said she sometimes paid as much as 27 million yen to Tanaka’s host club for one visit.

She said Tanaka simply replied, “That’s great,” giving no words of thanks or kindness.

In August 2023, Watanabe was arrested by Aichi prefectural police on suspicion of aiding and abetting fraud over the sale of manual to the Nagoya woman.

She was later rearrested on suspicion of fraud.

Tanaka was arrested on suspicion of violating the organized crime punishment law by knowingly receiving proceeds from crimes perpetrated by Watanabe.

On April 19, a few days before the ruling, Watanabe said: “I have done something I should not have done. I want to pay for it.”

She added: “I wanted to be needed by someone. This is the result.”

(This article was written by Moeno Kunikata and Toshinari Takahashi.)

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