Activity of Anti-Social, Forgery Artists Appear in Many Fraud Cases (1/4)

This article is the 1st part of rough translation of the report by Hirofumi Ito, published on a web media called “Gendai Business,” on July 3, 2014. (http://gendai.ismedia.jp/articles/print/39737) Ito is one of leading journalists who cover organized crime in Japan.

2nd Criminal Investigation Division of Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), the division specializes in investigation on white color crime, has arrested 5 suspects including Toshiyuki Someya and Fumio Sasai. The charge is that they cheated victim into false real estate deal by pretending to be real estate owner in Setagaya ward. The suspects are currently under interrogation by the division. At the same time, 4th Organized Crime Division of MPD, which specializes in investigation on large organized crime groups (a.k.a. Yakuza or Boryoku-dan), had continued investigation on another case in which a major ad company called Dentsu was defrauded in LED trading. The 4th Organized Crime Division finally arrested 6 suspects including Toshio Morita and Toshihisa Takahashi on June 24.

Fraudsters who made the Most of Forgery Documents

Criminals who forge various documents including driver’s license, deed to property, certificate of seal and other documents are called “Jimen-shi” (“地面師” means land racketeer.) The suspects arrested in the Setagaya case is the typical example. On the other hand LED case is a fraud in that suspects persuaded Dentsu representative into their LED trading ring and ripped off advance deposit. Setting of the two frauds seem different.

However, there are forgery artists who fabricate ID documents or deeds in both cases. The land racketeers and the LED fraudsters are also forgery artists. Although little case is detected by authorities, boom of clean energy is provoking forgery of the permission documents on solar power generation device issued by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan’s economic planning ministry. Many brokers pitch such clean energy “investments.”

Therefore, same suspects are arrested in several different cases.

14 suspects have been arrested in the LED case as of now. Among them are two well-known big players in the land racketeer community.