Experts told ST that there is an urgent need to raise awareness and convince shady part-time work recruits to seek police help before they commit a crime. - AFP
TOKYO: One of the safest countries in the world has been hit by a tidal wave of crime. In Japan, hardly a week has gone by since October without news reports urging people to secure their homes.
This is due to the rise of yamibaito – shady part-time work that promises easy money, through job ads on social media, anonymous text messages or even references from friends.
The work, however, is illegal. Job applicants are often recruited into violent burglaries, besides murder, armed robbery, scams, fraud and drug trafficking.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has made eradicating yamibaito a top policy priority, saying in a policy speech on Nov 29: “Recently, not a day goes by without seeing a report in the media of robberies or fraud involving so-called ‘shady part-time jobs’.
“Such crimes threaten the values and morals cherished in Japanese society, including compassion towards others and honest effort, and must not be tolerated.”
National Police Agency commissioner-general Yasuhiro Tsuyuki told reporters on Dec 5 that about seven in 10 yamibaito runners are aged below 30, with youth often asked to perform dangerous crimes.
Many of those ensnared are disenfranchised and impressionable youth, some laden with debt or stricken by poverty, while others aspire to a glamorous lifestyle.
This includes fourth-year undergraduate Masaki Saen, 23, who broke into a house and attempted to rob a man in his 70s by strangling him. Saen reportedly wanted to buy a computer, but was so ridden with guilt that he turned himself in to the police on Oct 30.
While the ringleaders are often thought to be linked to criminal groups, the arrests of two young mothers as alleged perpetrators last week exemplify how ordinary the masterminds can be.
“It is not a crime that only organised crime groups can plan and execute, and it is possible that the mastermind does not belong to any criminal organisation,” Kyushu University criminologist Koji Tabuchi told The Straits Times.
Ringleaders use the veil of anonymity provided by social media and burner phones to lure people with the promise of a lofty payout, in exchange for a few hours of “work”. But the gig is not immediately made known in the job ad.
Applicants are asked to submit their personal information, such as a photograph of their IDs via an encrypted app such as Signal or Telegram, to get the job.
But doing so entraps them, and they find themselves unable to back out later on, with the ringleaders threatening them and their families with full knowledge of where they live.
The hires are treated as errand boys who act as the hands and feet of the criminal operation – expendable and easily replaced if caught.
That the lackeys are often far removed from the masterminds has made it difficult to eradicate the crime, former police investigator Yu Inamura told ST. This is especially so if the ringleaders cover their tracks well and can argue plausible deniability.
Security cameras were a strong deterrent in the past, Inamura added, but now, the consequences threatened by the masterminds for runners who fail to follow through carry more weight than the fear of being caught.
Ishiba has told Parliament that he is considering a revision of laws to allow police investigators to conduct sting operations using fake IDs to infiltrate gangs of violent robbers recruited through yamibaito and stop crimes before they can be committed, while also potentially sussing out the masterminds.
Inamura, who is now director of the Japan Counter-Intelligence Association consultancy, told ST that this has an added advantage: “It acts as a deterrent as it keeps perpetrators second-guessing whether the applicant is a police investigator.”
Meanwhile, “mum friends” Yuka Kuroda, 31, and Yu Koura, 32, recently put a face to the less violent yamibaito fraud rings after they were arrested on Dec 5.
The duo, whose children were enrolled in the same nursery, are allegedly behind at least 10 cases involving runners they hired to purchase electronics using a stolen payment QR code. The items were resold online.
The women reportedly cooked up the ploy as Koura was saddled with debt due to excessive spending at host clubs, where women can pay for the company of good-looking men, and Kuroda wanted more spending money for herself.
Experts told ST that there is an urgent need to raise awareness and convince yamibaito recruits to seek police help before they commit a crime.
Commissioner-general Tsuyuki said police protection was offered to 125 people in the 1½ months to Nov 30. He stressed: “Don’t give in to threats just because criminals know your personal information.”
Professor Tabuchi suggested the need to mandate social media operators to regulate and remove posts of job ads that may be soliciting illegal work, and added that raising financial and social media literacy through education is key.
Inamura pointed to the risks that ringleaders may change tack and increasingly target under-14-year-olds if urgent action is not taken, given that the Penal Code states that acts by juveniles under the age of 14 are not punishable.
“Their lower literacy and awareness mean they may be more likely to apply for yamibaito without any hesitation,” he said.
“Not nipping the problem in the bud could lead to a dangerous future.” - The Straits Times/ANN
