The Counter-deception Blog

from The Asahi Shimbun
Women are main victims of callers who ask for money.
Dupes have handed over more than 10 billion yen to con artists this year in the telephone scams known as ore-ore sagi (``it's me, it's me'' fraud), according to the National Police Agency (NPA).
The total amount paid out from January to August was 10.032 billion yen, 2.3 times more than in the corresponding period last year, NPA officials said Wednesday.
The monthly amount has been increasing since May, reaching about 2.31 billion yen in August alone, the largest monthly amount ever.
In the scam, a con artist calls and pretends to be a distraught relative in need of quick cash. The swindler asks for the money to be placed immediately in a designated bank account.
In many cases, the reason given is that the money is needed to settle a dispute, such as a traffic accident, out of court.
The swindlers have also said that the money is needed to pay off loan sharks or to pay for a girlfriend's abortion.
Recently, some swindlers have even pretended to be police officers urging their victims to pay the money for their close relatives.
Of the about 5,500 people conned in this scam until August this year, about 4,100 were women. Of the female victims, about 1,220 were in their 50s, about 790 in their 40s, about 680 in their 60s, and about 630 in their 70s.
Meanwhile, only 156 people were arrested in the ore-ore fraud cases this year.(IHT/Asahi: October 8, 2004) (10/08)

Comment: Reflects the Japanese “shame” culture. Reminds me of Nagisa Oshima's great movie, “Boy”—
"The acclaimed Boy was… inspired by a true story. A man and a woman traveled around Japan with their young son, whom they had trained to run in front of moving cars and pretend to be struck and badly injured. The parents would then demand money from the frightened drivers. Oshima returns to a more straightforward narrative style with Boy; the film, one of his most affecting due to its sympathetic depiction of the title character, is a savage vision of Japanese family values (patriarchy, filial obedience) grown poisonous at the root." From www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/04/oshima.html