Damage from confirmed fraud cases came to ¥55.94 billion in 2014, the most since 2004, when authorities began tallying such information, provisional data released by the National Police Agency showed Thursday.
The total is based on what the police dub "special fraud" cases, which include swindling senior citizens by impersonating their children and requesting urgent money transfers by phone.
The figure topped ¥50 billion for the first time and rose 14.3 percent from the previous record of ¥48.95 billion in 2013. The annual number of cases with victims 65 or older rose 13.4 percent to 10,540 in 2014, the NPA said.