Photo/Illutration A number of illegal jobs ranging from carrying out home invasions to selling illegal drugs have been reportedly posted on the Telegram messaging app. This photo was taken on Nov. 20. (Shoko Mifune)

A series of home invasions in and around the Tokyo metropolitan area appear to have originated through communications on the Telegram messaging app, experts said.

The perpetrators were hired via social media, and a portion of communication between job posters and hirelings is believed to have taken place through the app.

Experts are calling on the public to exercise caution regarding suspicious interactions on the app where users can exchange text and images.

Many job postings with suspected ties to criminal activities were reportedly seen on Telegram where data encryption allows for a high degree of anonymity.

NTT Communications Corp., headquartered in Tokyo, published a blog post on Nov. 8 by one of its engineers titled, “Regarding activities of special fraud communities.”

The post explains how these criminal groups post jobs online and what those gigs entail.

Masaomi Masumoto, a 27-year-old engineer who works at the company’s technology division of innovation center, confirmed the existence of dozens of “channels” where job postings were made.

A Telegram channel is similar to a bulletin board where an administrator can send messages to a wide audience of subscribers. Users can see all messages in a channel once they join it.

“These suspected illegal job offerings can be viewed by anyone, and some of them are hard to distinguish from regular jobs,” Masumoto said.

However, there are still red flags. Jobs with excessively large compensation compared with others as well as posts using slang thought to be linked with criminal activities are two tip-offs.

In addition to posts for roles such as “receiver,” “caller” and “seller” in fraud schemes, there were also listings for at least 13 types of “jobs.” These include the sale of mobile phone SIM cards and illegal drugs.

Telegram can be downloaded and used for free by anyone who registers a mobile phone number.

“Division of labor is becoming more advanced,” said Atsushi Kanda, 42, a manager at NTT. “Job postings that used to only show up in places accessible to people with specialized knowledge, such as the dark web, have begun appearing online where ordinary people can see them.”

With this change, Kanda expressed a need for awareness.

“We need to use the internet on the presumption that there are individuals with malicious intent,” he said.

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