Crime · Jurisdiction
In plain English
The National Police Agency uses 特殊詐欺 (tokushu sagi) as a statistical and investigative classification, rather than as the title of a criminal statute. Japan’s Foreign Ministry issued successive warnings about recruitment into overseas scam operations and raised the danger level for Myawaddy in December 2025. The NPA has also identified Southeast Asian fraud bases directing accomplices in Japan, without publishing a numeric overseas share.
The domestic term is Tokushu sagi (特殊詐欺). That matters here because the offshore operations and the domestic fraud are connected: the term entry states whether it is a statutory definition or an agency classification, and the record below separates reported participation from arrest, prosecution and possible coercion.
Correction, 18 October 2026. Clarified that 特殊詐欺 is a National Police Agency classification rather than a standalone statutory offense, here and in the page's own wording.
Each entry states how well it is sourced. An advisory read from a ministry’s own site and a figure that exists only in newspaper reporting are different kinds of fact, and anyone deciding whether to cite one should know which they are holding.
National Police Agency
A liaison officer was posted to Bangkok covering Southeast Asia — an inspector from the Organised Crime Department, on secondment.
No NPA release found for this; the announcement appears to have been made at a briefing and was carried uniformly by the national press the same day.
Attributed to the issuing body but carried only in news reporting — no primary document located.
National Police Agency
The annual crime situation report states that bases including call centres are located overseas in Southeast Asia, with directors issuing instructions to perpetrators inside Japan, and sets the detection of overseas bases as a priority requiring operational cooperation with foreign authorities.
The report gives no numeric overseas share of cases, arrests or losses. Do not infer one.
Read directly from the issuing body’s own publication.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Myawaddy District, Karen State, Myanmar raised to Level 3 — advice to cease travel. The stated reason is explicitly the compounds: large-scale special-fraud bases have been established there, Japanese nationals have been made to take part, and several have already been detained locally.
This is Japan’s ONLY zone-specific danger level set on scam-compound grounds. Japan’s levels for Poipet are set by the Thailand border conflict, not by fraud.
Read directly from the issuing body’s own publication.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Advisory on overseas dark part-time work run by criminal organisations including anonymous, fluid criminal groups — connecting the domestic recruitment channel to the offshore bases.
Read directly from the issuing body’s own publication.
Aichi Prefectural Police
Twenty-nine Japanese nationals held by Cambodian authorities at a Poipet compound were flown to Japan by charter, and all twenty-nine were arrested aboard the aircraft on suspicion of attempted fraud. The alleged offence was police-impersonation calls to residents of the Kantō region — Japanese defrauding Japanese, from Cambodia.
No police or agency publication located; carried by national newspapers.
Attributed to the issuing body but carried only in news reporting — no primary document located.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Spot advisories for Thailand and Myanmar on the border fraud bases: Japanese recruited through online games and social media, taken across, and beaten when quotas are missed. States the area is effectively controlled by ethnic armed organisations and beyond the reach of Myanmar’s authorities.
Read directly from the issuing body’s own publication.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Third in the series. Records that minors are now being made into callers abroad, that passports are seized, and that beatings occur inside the organisations.
Read directly from the issuing body’s own publication.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
First in a continuing series of warnings about special fraud, framed around not becoming a perpetrator.
Read directly from the issuing body’s own publication.