Slightly past 9 a.m. on a recent weekday in mid-May, an Asahi Shimbun reporter was getting ready at his home to go to work when his smartphone rang.

He answered the call right away without checking where the call was coming from.

“This is Matsuoka from the Metropolitan Police Department's No. 2 investigation division,” a man on the other side of the line said. “Is this the correct number for Mr. Ryuta Somedaya?”

The caller sounded in his 20s or 30s. He spoke politely.

The reporter’s family name should have been pronounced Sometaya, but is often incorrectly pronounced when the spelling is rendered only in kanji.

“The Aichi prefectural police are investigating a case of large-scale money laundering by Takuya Higuchi,” the caller said.

The reporter knew that a suspect who goes by that name had been arrested jointly by the Aichi prefectural police and the MPD on suspicion of fraud in April, even though the reporter had not personally covered the case.

“And a cash card under the name of Mr. Ryuta Somedaya has been discovered during the investigation,” the man told the reporter.

He went on to ask: “Could you confirm the domicile registered with it?” and he read aloud a Tokyo address.

Both the name and the address were certainly the reporter’s.

“The card has been used in money laundering,” the man said. “We suspect you are involved in the case in some way or another, Mr. Somedaya.”

The reporter abruptly realized he was under suspicion himself.

“You are currently under two 'kengi' (suspicion),” the man said, adding: “It’s not 'yogi' (suspicion), but only kengi.”

The reporter didn’t quite feel convinced.

He had covered criminal cases and was, until three years ago, the chief beat reporter covering the Osaka prefectural police.

A suspect is commonly referred to as a “yogi-sha” in Japanese, but the term is part of the news media jargon. The reporter knew that police never use the terms “yogi” and “kengi” to refer to different degrees of suspicion.

“You will have to undergo questioning--well, that will be voluntary--at what is called a ‘detention room’ with the Aichi prefectural police,” the man said.

Detention rooms are there for suspects to be detained in so they will not flee or cause harm. Police are not entitled to take anybody there in the voluntary questioning stage.

The reporter had felt that something wasn’t quite right. That intuition turned into a certainty in the reporter’s mind.

“Could you speak to the Aichi prefectural police detective in charge of the case?” the man asked, and the phone line fell silent.

The reporter looked at his smartphone screen and learned that the call was coming from a number that begins with a plus sign, which means the call was emanating from abroad.

As the reporter found out later, no country in the world has the code number +42 or +425, with which the number on the screen began.

“This is Koki Saito from the Aichi prefectural police No. 2 investigation division,” a voice said at the other end of the line after two or three minutes.

“I am now opening official questioning,” the voice said.

How could there be police “questioning” by phone, with none of the parties really knowing who he was speaking to?

“Are you using social media?” the voice asked. “Are you using Signal or Telegram?”

“As a reporter, I sometimes use them as part of interviews with sources overseas,” the reporter said.

Whereupon the caller changed the tone of his voice, or so it seemed to the reporter.

“Oh, you are a reporter,” he said. “Could you wait a little while?”

And the phone line went dead.

The reporter called back, but the call was never answered.

He found himself psychologically more shaken, than he had ever thought possible, by being told that he was “under investigation,” even though so many things about the allegation sounded suspicious.

The reporter visited a police station near where he lives on another day.

A male official who attended to the reporter asserted the call was undoubtedly a fraud scam and continued: “Various scenarios have been used. In fact, police often learn about new tactics only when they are told about them by victims.”

SCAMS GROWING MORE INGENIOUS

Victims across Japan were found to have incurred losses in a provisional total of 2,905 cases of fraud scams, during the first four months of this year, by those pretending to be police officers, with a total loss of 24.73 billion yen ($171 million), according to National Police Agency statistics.

In many of the cases, the callers present themselves as police officers and tell the victims, for example, that their accounts have been used in crimes, and demand money from them, ostensibly for proof that they are innocent.

The schemes continue to evolve and are growing ever more ingenious.

NPA officials are alerting the public to the danger of similar scams, saying that police never demand money or goods.

Among the fraud scams by those pretending to be police officers, there has been a sharp rise, since the beginning of this year, in the number of those that fraudulently display the phone number of a police station or other establishment on the screen of a smartphone or other devices of the target.

There were only several cases of the sort per month at the beginning of last year, but the monthly count exceeded 100 in July last year and rose to 1,177 in January, 2,239 in February, 3,600 in March and 3,824 in April this year.

When money or goods were demanded, the targets have not always been induced into transferring cash. Some victims were cajoled into buying gold bullion, which was then swindled from them.

In some cases, con artists sent the uniform resource locator (URL) of a fake MPD website through a social media platform to a victim.

The trick is so designed that, when a “receipt number” cited by the con artists is entered on the fake website, the image of an arrest warrant carrying the victim’s name is shown on the screen, officials said.

Fake websites of the Osaka prefectural police department have also been found.

NPA officials are calling on the public to contact police when they have received any suspicious phone call.

“By no means do police ever demand money in exchange for exempting a suspect from an arrest,” the officials say.

[Consult the police if any of the following applies]

- The caller tells you by phone that you are under investigation

- The caller induces you to use a messaging app

- The caller sends you images of a police officer’s ID notebook or an arrest warrant

- The caller demands money or goods from you

- The caller makes a video call to your personal smartphone

- A caller, posing as a police officer, contacts you from an international call number that begins with the plus (+) sign

(This article was written by Ryuta Sometaya and Daichi Itakura.)