Ore ore sagi

The other day, I got terrible news from my student. She was caught out by a type of telephone fraud prevalent in Japan. It’s a scam that plays on three elements of Japanese life: The breakdown of the family unit, the traditional deference to authority, and the great importance of saving face and avoiding scandal.
It’s called 俺俺詐欺 (Ore ore sagi = ‘I... I...’ fraud)
The stories that the crooks use change every few months, but the underlying concepts remain the same.
A mother receives a phone call out of the blue. On the other end of the line, a young man pretends to be her son. He starts the call in a muffled voice saying, ‘I... I... I’m in big trouble.’ You can see how the crime gets its name.
The mother often panics and doesn’t question an unfamiliar voice. You have to remember that young Japanese men are renowned for being taciturn at the best of times. In any case, if she does query how he sounds, he can always put it down to emotion or to having to speak quietly and not be heard.
On top of all this, the gangsters really do their homework. They use school yearbooks and city registers to find out names, ages, residences, and so on. It’s not that hard to be tricked.
Next an authority figure will come on the line, often a supposed boss or police officer or the like. A Japanese woman of a certain age is almost pre-programmed to respect and trust superiors. It takes a strong character to show too much suspicion.
The panicked woman is now fully primed. The crooks play their trump card. They say that if she simply transfers a certain sum of money to such and such an account, the whole matter will be forgotten. Thus her son will avoid any damaging scandal and her family won’t lose face in public.
The sum of money is not to be sneezed at. Usually it comes to about 2 to 4 million yen (about 12,000 to 24,000 euro). This amount is not chosen at random. It represents the maximum ATM transfer you can make over one or two days. Once again, the gangs do their homework and target people who would have such quick funds available.
Now my poor student is no idiot. She’s an intelligent, experienced woman. But unfortunately she fits the ideal profile for such a fraud. She’s rich. She’s of an age where it’s difficult for her not to respect authority. And crucially her young son lives away from home. Like many young men he’s very lazy about keeping in touch. She wakes up every day worrying about him. And because he never calls her, she has no real idea what’s going on in his life.
They spun her a doozie of a yarn. Her ‘son’ said he’d borrowed some money from his company to buy stock. He was sure it would skyrocket and he’d make a killing. He planned to pay the company back and no one would be any the wiser. But the share price never rose, his boss found out, and now he was in deep trouble.
The supposed boss then came on the line. He said the son had always been a good and popular worker. They didn’t want to let one rash mistake ruin his whole career. The boss said that if she quickly reimbursed the company, they wouldn’t report the matter to the police and that would be that.
Now I’m sure you are all in disbelief at this stage and have lots of questions.
Like why didn’t she just call him back on his mobile or home phone? Of course the ‘son’said he had to stay at his company and that his boss wanted to listen in on all calls.
Or why didn’t the bank query such a large transfer? The thing is, they did. But my student was terrified that the story would turn out to be true. In that case, the bank would have no choice but to report the incident to the authorities, and her son’s future would be in tatters.
Or even why didn’t the police just trace the bank account and recover the money? Simply, the crooks usually buy bank account information from homeless people who no longer use it. As soon as the money is transferred, they close the account and the only trail leads to a plastic tent in some park or under some bridge.
These criminals are ingenious. If only they could use their powers for good.
So what do you think? Could this happen in your home country? Or is such a fraud only possible because of a rare combination of social conditions here in Japan.
I’d like to end on a happy note. My student has shown herself to be a positive and resilient person. Out of the shame and embarrassment, she has found some good. On hearing the terrible news, not one member of her family criticised her. In fact, her son deeply apologised for having fallen out of touch and for having contributed to the incident. My student feels that, though she lost a tonne of money, the closer bond her family now enjoys is worth every yen.