On Jan. 23, the Chiba prefectural police announced that in 2013 there 724 reported cases of telephone swindling targeting older people, a phenomenon that is still referred to as ore-ore sagi (literally, “it’s me, it’s me” swindles) though the modus operandi of the perpetrators have changed since it first became topical some years ago.
Originally, swindlers pretended to be members of the intended victim’s family and feigned some sort of trouble that required large sums of money to rectify, in which case the target was instructed to transfer the money to a specific bank account. Some media also call this crime furikomi sagi (bank transfer swindling).
Despite lots of publicity regarding this type of crime, swindlers are getting bolder. In 90 percent of the cases reported in Chiba, the swindler or an agent went to the home of the victim and either picked up the cash directly or, even more amazingly, picked up the victim’s ATM card and then withdrew the money himself.