Photo/Illutration A man points to a fake website on Jan. 29 in Sapporo through which he was swindled. (Chifumi Shinya)

A man in Sapporo preparing for retirement thought he had stumbled across an easy way to make money, and his optimism soared after some early returns.

But in less than three weeks, he learned that he had been swindled out of 30 million yen ($200,000).

The 60-year-old company employee was another victim in the plethora of scams that use famous names, in this case the Macy’s department store in New York City.

The swindle of the Sapporo man was particularly complicated.

Through the Hello Talk language-exchange app late last year, he met a woman who said she was a 42-year-old Chinese resident of Seoul.

They then started communicating with each other through the Line messaging app.

When the man asked her about her job, she explained that she had “a business at Macy’s” and that “15 percent of the proceeds come to me.”

“It is very easy,” the Sapporo man quoted her as saying. “I make my living with this alone.”

She said she could help the curious man set up his own business at Macy’s online site, explaining that he would receive a portion of the sales without even owning stock in the company.

He clicked on an address sent from the woman, which opened a site featuring the Macy’s logo. It also allowed the language setting to be switched from English to Japanese.

He found nothing abnormal with the site, so he decided to open his shop there.

The first step was to pay a deposit, followed by choosing bags, daily necessities and other Macy’s articles that his online shop would sell.

For each item he ordered for his shop, 85 percent of its full retail price was deducted from the deposit as an advance payment.

So when a buyer paid the full price for the item, the man would receive 15 percent of the sale as profit.

He initially pulled in $100 in profits because orders came in promptly, even for luxury brand-name products.

According to the site, his shop’s sales totaled 40 million yen in less than three weeks from Dec. 28, giving him a supposed profit of 6 million yen.

But to keep up with the sales orders, the man had to make deposit payments day after day.

When he failed to secure necessary funds for the deposit, he asked the site operators to return his money. He was instead told to deposit an additional $50,000.

To raise the maximum amount of transferable money for a deposit, the man sought advice from a bank teller in Sapporo, who suggested the business “may be fraudulent.”

The Macy’s site was indeed a phishing site. The supposed Chinese woman’s accounts on Line and Hello Talk no longer existed.

And the 30 million yen he had submitted for deposits disappeared, depleting the savings he had prepared for his golden years.

He later found that the “deposit payments” were transmitted to an account held in the name of a Japanese individual.

“I should not have tried to take the easy way out,” the victim said.

A Hokkaido police official warned citizens to stay alert: “There is a high possibility of scams if you are urged to transfer money to individuals’ accounts.”

Statistics from the National Police Agency show that more than 10,000 con jobs were committed nationwide in 2024, causing 126.8 billion yen in damage, 2.8 times that of the previous year.

Get-rich proposals and the naming of famous investors and other celebrities are often used to lure victims.

The swindles frequently start with direct messages on social networking sites.

Victims are invited to trade in cryptocurrencies or invest in oil, natural gas and even rare wine bottles.

Police urge citizens to call the dedicated consultation number #9110 if they sense a scam.

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