Overview
- Aichi Prefectural Police arrested five men on fraud charges on Sept. 2, including the re‑arrest of DL‑NEXT representative Yuta Ishida, and have not disclosed the suspects’ formal denials or admissions.
- Investigators say the group recruited about 280 women via social media to pose as matching‑app users, collect men’s LINE IDs and income details, and move conversations off the apps into private chats for follow‑up pitches.
- Police seized an operational manual that set pay per obtained LINE ID (about ¥500–¥1,300), instructed staff to exclude men with annual incomes under ¥4 million and to avoid certain professions, and documented targeting of roughly 5,600 men.
- The arrest stems from cases in October–November 2025, including one in Tama City where a man was allegedly tricked into sending about ¥150,000 in cryptocurrency, and police say the suspects coordinated with other special‑fraud groups to steal assets.
- Authorities are continuing to probe the scheme’s scale, links to other fraud rings, and whether the recruited women knowingly took part; the case highlights how gig‑style hiring and off‑platform messaging are being used to scale romance and crypto scams.