First, I gotta say, I love the Internet. Last night and this morning I got a couple of very strange messages on my cell. They seemed to be from a man in his 40s or 50s, talking very quickly. I really couldn't make out what he was saying... something about 回収 ("collection") and 早い段階 ("at an early stage"). Fortunately my phone showed me his number, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to Google it. If the guy was from a legit business and was calling from a business number, I reasoned, I should get a hit and be able to figure out what it was about.
I certainly got a hit... to this cached page from a disgruntled blogger warning people that someone with the same number had been trying to get him to pay a fictitious bill.
Unfortunately, this is not at all uncommon in Japan. Cases of phone fraud, in which fraudsters call unsuspecting people and demand that they wire money to a savings account are rampant. Fortunately, you'd have to be pretty thick to fall for most of their ploys, which include:
- Pretending to be the victim's son/daughter and in need of money.
- Demanding payment in connection with their cellular phone/Internet usage.
- My favorite, claiming to be the police and telling the victim that their son/husband was caught groping a woman on a train, but that charges will be dropped if the victim wires them cash.
