According to a report in Japan’s”Daily News” on the 22nd, criminals around Japan have used the investment value of gold to entice elderly people to exchange their savings for gold, as the yen has fluctuated and the retail price of gold in Japan has repeatedly hit record highs, and try to swindle them out of their gold.
According to police, in one case in Nagoya, the fraudsters first called a woman in her 70s pretending to be an employee of a telecommunications company, claiming to cancel her communications service, and then impersonated a police officer, send fake arrest warrants through social media. Then, in the name of investigating bank accounts, the”Fake police” tricked them into changing their deposits into gold, and finally managed to defraud the old man of his gold.
There have been at least four similar incidents in Aichi Prefecture since July, involving sums ranging from 2.5 m to 20m yen (100 yen) , victims are also emerging in Miyazaki Prefecture, ?saka-fu and elsewhere.
The Global Times correspondent in Japan noted that several months ago he had seen reports on television that victims had been cheated out of gold bars worth more than 100 million yen. One police department plans to step up anti-fraud campaigns through mobile apps and other means, adding that”The police will not show arrest warrants or conduct financial investigations through mobile apps”. Mitsubishi materials, a big precious metals seller, also warned the public of”Bullion Fraud” on its website.
Some police officers said that swindlers trick the elderly into gold deposits, there is a hidden identity, to escape the attack. At banks and convenience stores, staff are trained to be on the lookout for anyone trying to withdraw large sums of money or use an ATM while on the phone. However, if a customer says he wants to exchange the cash for gold, it is difficult for the staff to determine whether he has been defrauded.
Another police officer said gold was seen as a safe investment because of the global turmoil. On July 17th the price of gold bars at Tanaka, a Japanese company, hit a record high of ¥ 13,879 per gram, more than eight times that of 20 years ago. Police said scam gangs had apparently noticed Gold’s rise and were pinning the”Stability” mentality on the elderly.
Yoshihiro Uchida, a visiting economics professor at the Chukyo University, says criminals can also overcome the psychological defences of the elderly by emphasising the costs of a weaker yen. “A lot of older people are revealing that they have invested in gold before, and while scammers can get them to convert into encrypted assets, the barriers to buying gold are significantly lower,” he said