14 hours ago
8 people arrested for being fake fortune-tellers, as opposed to… real fortune-tellers?
An interesting arrest was made by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police in which eight men and women were accused of defrauding at least 10 people across Japan out of a total exceeding 50 million yen. They did this by operating a 'fake fortune-telling website' and giving people fortunes such as, 'You will definitely win the lottery today.'
They were reported by a woman in her 70s who had been using the 'fake' fortune-telling website since May 2024 and made over 350 money transfers throughout the course of 10 months that totaled 7.37 million yen.
▼ News report showing two of the arrested suspects, each of whom look very intimidating in very different ways
While it's good to see fraudsters getting what they deserve and the prevention of other people being victimized by them, there's something bothering me about this case… Let's see if the online comments can pinpoint the problem here.
'Think about it. If they could win the lottery with their power, why would they work as fortune-tellers.'
'If people want to increase their chances of winning the lottery they should use that money for more tickets. Not that it would help much.'
'That one guy has a face scarier than any horror game I've ever played.'
'The lottery is kind of fraud too, in a way.'
'These kinds of people will never stop taking money from others unless the penalties are heavier.'
'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 350 times…'
'I wonder what the market value for fortune-tellers is these days.'
'Don't all fortune-tellers do what they did?'
To say these people are 'fake fortune-tellers' would strongly imply the existence of real fortune-tellers, wouldn't it?
So, why did these people get arrested when other fortune-tellers continue to do what they do?
Fortune-tellers and psychics tend to walk that fine line between fraud and entertainment by keeping predictions comfortably ambiguous. Assuming these people were smart enough to put an 'entertainment purposes only' disclaimer on their website, they still may have crossed the line by being too specific in saying the victims would win the lottery 'today' which could be demonstrably false. That is unless they try to get off on the technicality that the Japanese language often omits the subject of sentences so what they said literally translates to, 'Definitely winning the lottery today.'
But even with that excuse, the other transgression that lands them in the category of fraud is the clear-cut repeated attempts to get money out of people. Any law-abiding fortune-teller would charge you for a one-time session and let you be on your way, but these people were clearly stringing their victims along in order to get 350 separate payments from one, and that's precisely what distinguishes this fraud from 'real' fortune-telling.
Source: FNN Online Prime, Hachima Kiko
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