Photo/Illutration Manabu Sakai, chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, on Feb. 20 urges the public to be wary of shady job offers abroad. (Daichi Itakura)

At least 10 Japanese, including two high school students, have been offered “yami baito” (shady part-time jobs) in overseas destinations through the internet, the National Police Agency said Feb. 20.

The 10 were all males aged between 10 and 69, and the offers were made by people they met online.

Some who accepted the offers were forced to participate in special fraud or other crimes abroad.

In other cases, they were invited but did not travel, the NPA said.

Police have taken them all into protective custody, the NPA said.

“Be fully aware of the risks of such offers in social network interactions, including online games, and do not respond to anything that looks even slightly suspicious,” Manabu Sakai, chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, warned the public at a news conference.

The NPA confirmed the 10 cases during an examination of consultation and protection cases involving crime-related overseas travel that are handled by police in various regions.

According to the NPA, victims ventured abroad after being given travel tickets and false job descriptions by strangers they met through online games or social media sites.

Once overseas, they were threatened or locked up and forced to engage in fraudulent activities.

According to the NPA, one such Japanese victim was smuggled from Thailand into Myanmar, where he was forced to commit fraud in a building monitored by people armed with machine guns.

In another case, a victim who traveled to Cambodia was forced to commit fraud and was later placed under house arrest.

One victim in China was ordered to commit fraud. When he said he wanted to return to Japan, he received threats that cited the name of a criminal gang, the NPA said.

Another victim provided personal information to the recruiter, received a photo of a ticket to Malaysia, and then became so frightened that he consulted police.

In a well-known case, a 16-year-old high school student from Aichi Prefecture was taken to the town of Myawaddy in eastern Myanmar, near the Thai border. He was ordered to impersonate a police officer in a phone scam targeting elderly people in Japan.

The boy was rescued by Thai police earlier this month and returned to Japan.

He told Aichi prefectural police that hostages of the crime group in Myawaddy were punished with a stun gun if they failed to meet certain quotas for the fraud work.

In January, Thai police took into protective custody another Japanese male high school student, 17, who was in Myawaddy.

The teen was invited to go to Thailand by a 29-year-old Japanese man whom he met through an online game.

(This article was written by Shimpachi Yoshida, senior staff writer, and Daichi Itakura.)

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