The Age of the 'It's Me' Scam ― Organized Crime on the Other End of the Line

Last time we traced one of the largest investment frauds in history, which unfolded on Wall Street. The weapon was trust; the mechanism was the classic Ponzi scheme. The damage reached around 65 billion dollars.

Moving the stage to Japan, a fraud with an entirely different face ― yet sharing the same nature of preying on the human heart ― was shaking society in the 2000s. The targets were not investors but ordinary households, and the elderly above all. The weapon was not a flashy financial product but a single phone call. From the other end of the receiver came these words: ‘It’s me, it’s me.‘

It Began with ‘It’s Me, It’s Me’

The phrase ‘ore-ore sagi’ ― the ‘it’s me, it’s me’ scam ― is said to have become widely known in the early 2000s. According to reports, when police in Tottori Prefecture apprehended a suspect in this kind of fraud in 2003, the name was used and spread from there.

The core of the method is astonishingly simple: over the phone, impersonate a relative or acquaintance, exploit the moment the other person falls into anxiety and panic, and demand money. I caused an accident or some trouble, I embezzled company funds, I need money right now ― such storylines were used to unsettle the victim and rob them of the time to calmly verify.

Behind the spread of the damage lay changes in the shape of the family. More parents and children lived apart, and the voices of grandchildren and offspring grew harder to tell apart at once. Told that a cold had changed the voice, people would believe it. Onto this was layered the most easily shaken emotion of all: ‘my own family is in trouble.’ The deceivers preyed not on human weakness but on the strongest part of the feeling of caring for one’s family.

The Branching of Methods, and Their Organization

As society grew more wary of the ‘it’s me’ scam, the deceivers changed their form. In 2004 the National Police Agency named this kind of fraud, which prompts bank transfers, ‘furikome sagi’ (transfer fraud), and from the 2010s onward it came to use ‘tokushu sagi’ (special fraud) as the umbrella term for crimes that swindle money and goods without face-to-face contact, using the phone and other means.

The change in names was itself the diversification of methods. The ‘refund scam,’ impersonating a government office worker and getting victims to operate an ATM by falsely claiming that medical fees or insurance premiums would be returned. The ‘fictitious billing scam,’ demanding payment for charges the victim never incurred. Methods of posing as a bank clerk or police officer and swapping out and stealing a cash card. The signboards changed, but the core ― robbing people of their composure with anxiety, panic, or the bait of a small gain ― remained consistent throughout.

And there was one more major change: ‘organization.’ What had been improvised, opportunistic crimes transformed into a structure resembling a ‘business’ run by a group with finely divided roles.

The Disposable ‘Foot Soldiers,’ and Society’s Counterattack

Special-fraud organizations are built by dividing roles: the one who deceives the victim over the phone, the one who goes to collect the cash, the one who withdraws it from the ATM. As reported, the foot-soldier operatives who handle this collection and withdrawal are often called ‘pick-up runners’ and ‘withdrawal runners.’

The problem is that these foot soldiers are premised on being ‘disposable.’ The central figures never appear in the open, and the ones who get caught are only the young people who show up at the scene. In recent years, so-called ‘dark part-time jobs’ that advertise ‘high pay for easy work’ on social media and the like have drawn young people who do not grasp the full picture into the foot-soldier ranks, becoming a problem. Among the operatives apprehended are minors, and many of them were reportedly the collection runners. What was meant to be a well-paying side job becomes a serious criminal charge ― what lies there is a cold structure that consumes people as pawns.

In 2023 the National Police Agency defined such groups, which repeatedly gather and disperse through social-media dark part-time jobs, as ‘anonymous, fluid crime groups,’ and made them a pillar of its countermeasures. Rather than fixed organizations, their fluidity ― loosely connecting and then dissolving each time ― is said to make apprehension difficult.

There is one thing worth emphasizing here. Those who fall victim to special fraud are by no means careless or foolish people. It is the gentlest part of a heart that cares for family and tries to be sincere that is targeted. So rather than dismissing it with ‘I would never be fooled,’ treat it as something that could happen to anyone: decide on a family password, do not answer unknown numbers, hang up once and check. Sharing such small preparations is a far surer shield than ridicule.

Turning the telephone ― the most familiar of tools ― into a weapon, this fraud turned the very trust between people, and the feeling of caring for family, against them. And the method of preying on the human heart continues to evolve as it changes stages. Before long, the stage of fraud would shift from the telephone to the internet.