Photo/Illutration The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department sets up a booth at an event for foreigners, calling on them not to sell or buy bank accounts, on May 10 in the capital’s Shibuya Ward. (Shun Yoshimura)

As “special fraud” operations rise sharply across Japan, scammers have started buying bank accounts from foreigners and using these to transfer and receive swindled funds.

Many of these bank accounts are thought to belong to foreign students or technical trainees who lived in Japan temporarily, then sold them for pocket money when they returned to their home countries.

Such sales are illegal and the accounts are often used to commit crimes.

The financial losses in these “special fraud” cases can be devastating for the victims.

In mid-July, a woman in her 40s living in Tokyo received a call from a man impersonating a police officer. The man asked for her cooperation in an investigation.

Claiming he needed to “confirm banknote serial numbers,” he instructed the woman to transfer money to a bank account that appeared to be in a foreign name.

The woman transferred a total of 4.3 million yen ($29,000).

Tokyo police deemed the incident a special fraud case, and discovered the bank account belonged to a foreign national who was not involved in the crime.

Police believe the foreign national had abandoned the account after no longer needing it, and the account subsequently fell into the hands of a special fraud group who used it for criminal activity.

Similar cases have increased rapidly this year.

According to data compiled by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s special fraud task force, from January to June, Tokyo recorded 2,163 special fraud cases, 625 more than in the same period last year.

The stolen funds were transferred into at least 3,161 bank accounts.

Of those, 357 were registered to foreign nationals—a more than threefold increase from the 91 foreign-named accounts used during the same period in the previous year.

According to the task force, these accounts are often sold on social media for tens of thousands of yen each.

“It seems some foreigners are transferring their unused accounts to others as if to make a little ‘souvenir money,’” a task force representative said.

Selling or transferring a bank account violates the Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds Law.

However, many foreigners are unaware that account trading is illegal or that such accounts are often used for criminal purposes, the MPD said.

The MPD’s international crime division is therefore leading an effort to educate foreigners about the illegality of selling bank accounts.

Police are also urging Japanese language schools and foreign communities to tell others, “Please never sell or transfer your account under any circumstances.”

Last year, annual losses from special fraud in Tokyo hit a record of approximately 15.3 billion yen.

In just the first half of this year, that figure has already surpassed 15 billion yen.

“The number of victims will not decrease unless we change the current situation where these accounts can be obtained so easily and in such large quantities,” an MPD representative said.

The MPD also plans to enhance cooperation with financial institutions to prevent the illegal transfer of accounts.