By NORIKI NISHIOKA/ Staff Writer
June 30, 2025 at 07:00 JST
Tokyo police are warning residents not to be taken in by fraudsters posing as police officers after a dramatic surge in cases.
Between January and April, the spoils from such cases across Tokyo came to 7 billion yen ($48.5 million), 23 times more than during the same period of last year.
Fake police officials typically contact victims by phone and refer to them as “suspects in certain crimes.”
One of the characteristics of police impersonation is that people from all generations have found themselves fleeced.
Describing the situation as “serious,” the capital’s Metropolitan Police Department is calling on residents to exercise extreme caution if they think they’ve been contacted by phony cops.
Statistics kept by the MPD show a sharp increase in scams centered on bank transfers through fraudulent “ore-ore” (it’s me, it’s me) activities, where imposters pretend to be police officers or victims’ relatives.
As many as 988 ore-ore swindles, including attempted cases, were reported to the MPD from January through April, marking a 3.5-fold increase from 284 instances in the same period a year earlier.
Of the confirmed ore-ore cases, scams involving self-proclaimed police personnel increased dramatically. The number of such swindles jumped 12.2 times to 706 year on year, accounting for 70 percent of all ore-ore fraud cases reported.
Scam artists posing as police made off with 6.99 billion yen from January to April, compared with 310 million yen for the same window of the previous year. The seasonal figure this year has already exceeded the 2024 annual total of 6.96 billion yen.
Even young and middle-aged people are apt to fall victim to fraudsters impersonating police officers. Individuals of any age can be deceived, although those in their 70s to 90s make up 90 percent of the victims of impostors claiming to be their children or grandchildren.
Data by generation reveals that the highest number of scams invoking a police presence, 154, were detected among residents in their 60s, followed by victims in their 50s at 139 cases and those in their 30s with 134 instances. There were also 122 cases discovered among twentysomethings or far younger victims.
Scammers typically call potential victims via numbers ending in “0110,” since the last four digits are used by police stations throughout Japan. Another tactic is to use international numbers beginning with “+81” as well as anonymous sequences.
More recently, con artists have displayed the genuine phone numbers of police stations on victims’ smartphones or landlines.
With recipients answering these fraudulent calls, the swindlers try to incite anxiety under the guise of being police officers, saying, “You are a suspect in a crime” and “Your bankbook has been exploited in an illegal incident.”
The fraudsters then show counterfeit police IDs or arrest warrants to the victims through video calls on the popular Line app. Those on the other end of the line are often deceived into believing in the fabricated stories.
The callers request afterward that the victims transfer specified amounts of money via online banking services under the pretext of “account investigations” or for other fictitious reasons.
As the police IDs and arrest warrants appear to be authentic, it is said to be extremely difficult for ordinary people to recognize them as fakes.
The MPD is urging people to hang up on phone users claiming to be police officers and then call their affiliated police stations, after asking the self-claimed investigators for their affiliations, names and extension numbers.
“This tactic is acceptable even when actual police officials are on the other end of the phone,” an MPD representative said. “We want people to make sure to stick to the call-back strategy to avoid becoming victims.”
A total of 1,496 special fraud cases, inclusive of ore-ore impersonation crimes, were confirmed by the MPD between January and April. The figure is 511 more than in the same period of last year.
The overall damage from these special fraud cases was up 7.9 billion yen to 10.93 billion yen on a year-on-year basis.
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This image from the Line messaging app captures a fake police ID shown by a fraudulent group to a scam victim, as the man who contacted the defrauded individual reportedly described himself as an official from Osaka prefectural police. Part of the photo is deliberately blurred for privacy reasons. (Provided by Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department)
