Japanese police arrest 6 men over scam from Vietnam

Yokohama – The Kanagawa prefectural police have arrested six Japanese men ages 22 to 58 for their suspected involvement in a telephone scam from a base in Vietnam.

Shunji Seto, 55, Seiya Abe, 28, and the other four were transferred from Vietnam, where local authorities busted the scam base in Bac Ninh, northern Vietnam, and detained related people, including the six, in June.

The Japanese suspects allegedly conspired with unidentified people to defraud a woman in her 20s in Yamaguchi Prefecture of ¥1 million on May 22 by making phone calls as fake police officers and telling her that her money needed to be checked because she was suspected of being a member of a fraud group.

The six are believed to have entered Vietnam via Cambodia and have been involved in more than 150 fraud cases mainly in the Kanto and Chubu regions in Japan by making scam calls. The total amount they stole tops ¥500 million, sources said.

According to the Kanagawa police, the scam base was discovered after a Japanese person fled from the base to the Japanese Embassy in Hanoi this year.