Two Japanese men arrested over Myanmar-based scam operations; allegedly forced to impersonate police, others to fool victims

The Star

24-04-2025

Shoki Ishikawa (left) and Tomonari Yachi after arriving at Haneda Airport from Thailand on Wednesday (April 23, 2025) afternoon. - Photo: The Yomiuri Shimbun
TOKYO: Two Japanese men allegedly involved in international scam operations conducted from Myanmar were arrested Wednesday (April 23) after being flown back to Japan.
The men had been detained by Thai police in March on suspicion of being involved in phone scams, and were arrested by the Aichi prefectural police onboard their flight to Haneda Airport in Tokyo.
This represents the first time for Japanese police to identify a case involving scams based in the border region of eastern Myanmar.
The men are believed to have been recruited through social media to do 'dark part-time jobs,' which often involve criminal activity.
The police will work closely with Thai authorities to investigate whether other Japanese have been involved in the scams in neighboring Myanmar.
The arrested men were Shoki Ishikawa, 32, and Tomonari Yachi, 22.
Both are unemployed and had no fixed address.
According to the police, the men were part of a scam ring that called the smartphone of a 46-year-old company employee from Suzuka, Mie Prefecture, while he was on a business trip in the United States on Jan 14.
A group member impersonated a police officer and falsely told the victim that an arrest warrant had been issued because he was suspected of involvement in money laundering.
He 'needed to pay cash to clear up these suspicions,' the man was told.
The scam group allegedly duped the victim into transferring ¥9.9 million to a bank account.
According to investigative sources, the two men flew to Bangkok from Narita Airport and Chubu Centrair International Airport in December.
They then travelled by land to a hub for fraud operations near Myawaddy in eastern Myanmar.
The men reportedly told acquaintances they had applied for 'lucrative part-time work' through the highly secure and confidential messaging app Telegram.
The Aichi police believe the men applied for dark part-time jobs.
A 16-year-old high school student from Aichi Prefecture taken into custody in Thailand in February had also traveled to the same scam base.
The student has since returned to Japan, and his answers to police questioning helped corroborate the men's involvement in the case.
Such fraud groups appear to be cleverly recruiting people to conduct their scams and luring them to bases overseas.
In November 2024, the high school student acquired a passport after a man he interacted with on Telegram suggested he 'could learn programming' overseas.
The student flew to Thailand in December. After first moving by road under the guidance of the fraud group, the student crossed into Myanmar by taking a boat over a river near the border. He was reportedly taken to a building ringed by barbed wire.
About 10 Japanese, including the student and the two men, are believed to have been at the scam hub.
The Aichi police believe the group's leaders set quotas for the three and forced them to conduct phone scams in which they impersonated police officers and other figures.
In recent years, overseas scam hubs whose operations target people in Japan have been located mostly in nations such as the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia.
The National Police Agency has dispatched senior investigators to various countries in Southeast Asia and is working closely with authorities in those nations to share information about the fraud bases and to facilitate the extradition of suspects.
Members of criminal organisations reportedly travel back and forth among these countries from their bases in Thailand.
On April 9, the agency agreed with senior Thai police officials it invited to Japan that police authorities from both nations would strengthen their cooperation on this issue. - The Yomiuri Shimbun