Overview
- Shizuoka Prefectural Police arrested four men in their 20s on suspicion of kidnapping for the purpose of international transfer to force a recruit to work as a “kakeko.”
- Investigators say the group lured a man with a promise of ¥10 million for a year, threatened him, took him to Haneda Airport, and flew him to Laos around January last year; he has since returned to Japan.
- Aichi Prefectural Police re-arrested six people on suspicion of illegal job placement for introducing “kakeko” to a Cambodia-based fraud organization, and sent them to prosecutors on January 15.
- One of the six, Yusuke Nishikawa, 32, was previously indicted under the Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds, and police say the suspects belong to a large bank-account broker network.
- Authorities are investigating ties to anonymous, fluid crime groups and possible organized-crime involvement through a joint investigative framework.