A 23-year-old university student sought help from the police days before his alleged involvement in an attempted burglary in the city of Mitaka in western Tokyo, law enforcement sources disclosed Wednesday.
Masaki Saen, who is from the city of Kyoto and a senior at a private university, reported threats that he had received after applying for a "dark" part-time job, or yami baito.
Saen reportedly approached Kyoto police with his mother on Oct. 28, two days before the Mitaka incident, expressing fears over his involvement in a job he found on the encrypted messaging app Telegram.
He said that after sending a photo of his ID, he received instructions to participate in fraud. When he tried to block the messages, he was contacted again through a different account. "I was told, 'You can't escape,' and felt scared," he reportedly told authorities.
In response, Kyoto police advised Saen not to engage in any criminal activity and assisted him in deleting Telegram from his smartphone. They offered Saen protective assistance, but he declined, saying it wasn’t necessary.
Despite the police intervention, Saen allegedly applied for another yami baito — seemingly motivated by financial struggles. On the night of Oct. 30, Saen turned himself in at a Tokyo police box, where he was subsequently arrested by the police in connection with an attempted burglary earlier the same day.
The incident unfolded around 1 a.m. on Oct. 30 when several men forced their way into a house in Mitaka and assaulted a male resident in his 70s. However, the group fled empty-handed after the resident resisted. The man, along with his wife in her 60s and daughter in her 30s, was unharmed.
Tokyo police are now investigating the extent of Saen's financial difficulties and the timeline leading up to his alleged reengagement with illegal work.
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