Japanese police say the amount of damage nationwide from cases of “special fraud” hit a record high last year at 141.4 billion yen, or about 928 million dollars.
The preliminary figure released by the National Police Agency is nearly twice the 2024 total.
“Special fraud” refers to a type of fraud where crooks contact victims by phone and other methods, pretending to be people such as an authority figure or a family member.
About 70 percent of the cases involved people pretending to be police. Damages in those cases totaled 98.5 billion yen, or about 646 million dollars, a jump from the previous year.
People in their 20s through their 40s accounted for 51 percent of victims of police imposters.
The amount scammed per case was about 17 million yen, or about 112,000 dollars, among people in their 70s and 16 million yen, and about 105,000 dollars, among those in their 60s.
Seventy-five percent of the phone calls, including those by police imposters, were made from overseas.
Fraud groups are believed to have created large-scale scam bases mainly in Southeast Asia, and to have forced Japanese nationals and others recruited with offers of shady part-time jobs to work the phones.
Apart from special fraud, damages from social media investment scams and romance scams also increased.
The police agency says the situation is critical and that measures are urgently needed to combat the various types of fraud.
Cambodia steps up crackdown on foreign nationals involved in scams
Cambodian authorities have been cracking down on foreign nationals suspected of involvement in scams. Scammers are known to operate from centers in Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries, making international phone calls to solicit money.
Authorities said they detained 805 foreign scam suspects, including American, Chinese and Japanese nationals on Tuesday, when they raided a casino in the southern city of Sihanoukville. The casino is believed to have been used for online fraud activities.
The authorities also reported that they confiscated around 650 computers and about 1,000 mobile phones.
Sihanoukville is said to be a hub for international scam groups. Last December, 16 Japanese nationals were detained on suspicion of involvement in fraud cases.
The Cambodian government has been stepping up law enforcement, aiming to eliminate scam groups by April. Authorities have sealed off 190 scam centers and detained more than 2,500 foreign scam suspects from seven countries since the beginning of this year.
date: 2026-02-12 17:38:00
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