Cases of remittance fraud known as "furikome sagi" (send me money!) scams are still rampant. Swindlers posing as relatives or as officials of government agencies approach people by telephone or the Internet and dupe them into sending them money. The police, banks and other organizations must enhance their cooperation in eradicating this nasty crime.

The National Police Agency's 2009 white book mentions furikome sagi and other frauds. Money-transfer scams reached a peak in 2004 with about 25,700 cases; the money swindled totaled about ¥28.4 billion. The number of cases gradually then declined while the swindled amounts leveled off at around ¥25 billion. But in 2008, police learned of some 20,500 cases with swindled amounts reaching about ¥27.6 billion.

The crime's rampancy is attributable to the fact that swindlers have improved their methods. In the past, many swindlers posed as sons or grandsons of their targets and made their pitch by phone, saying something like: "I've caused a traffic accident. Please transmit money to my bank account so that I can settle the matter." After this method became widely known, swindlers began telling their targets that they needed settlement money because of accusations that they were train gropers or that they had embezzled funds at work.

Swindlers also have divided roles among themselves. Some approach targets while others specialize in retrieving money from bank accounts. Still others prepare bank accounts or acquire mobile phones under fictitious names.

There are signs that cooperation among the police, banks and other entities has started to work. Police arrested 699 people in 4,400 cases of remittance scams in 2008, up from 454 arrests in 3,079 cases in 2007. The rate for clearing such cases went up from 17.2 percent in 2007 to 21.5 percent in 2008.

In the January-June period of 2009, the amount of money swindled decreased by 69.8 percent from a year before to about ¥5 billion. This still means ¥10 billion a year. There can be no relaxing of our guard against this crime.