Crime · Jurisdiction
In plain English
Japan’s response is carried mainly by the Foreign Ministry rather than the police: a chain of advisories running from 2023, escalating in December 2025 to the country’s only scam-driven danger-level raise. The National Police Agency states plainly that fraud bases now sit in Southeast Asia and direct accomplices inside Japan, but publishes no figure for the overseas share.
The domestic statutory term is Tokushu sagi (特殊詐欺). That matters here because the offshore operations and the domestic fraud are not two subjects. Nationals of this country are being defrauded, under this statute, by operations staffed in part by nationals of this country — a pattern all three governments in this section document in their own words.
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.