Mobile phone blocking technology in Japan stops fraud

Senior citizens have been targeted in Japan through a new cell phone scam. The scam is kind of complicated and doesn’t make a ton of sense but I think I get the gist of it. The elderly person will receive a phone call and told to go to the ATM to withdraw money. They’re told to stay on the line to receive future instructions and a money transfer occurs. The article from LetsJapan says they’re instructed to withdraw cash, but that doesn’t seem like much of a scam. You still have to mug the person to get the money or have them drop it off somewhere, in which case why use the phone? My guess is that ATM’s in Japan have the ability to transfer money to another account, and the person on the phone is telling them which account to deposit money in. In light of this, many ATMs in Japan use cell phone blocking waves to disable phones. Other ATMs have police who question you if you’re at the ATM on a phone. Doesn’t seem like much of a scam does it? Can’t you just trace where the money went?

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2 Responses to “Mobile phone blocking technology in Japan stops fraud”

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1 Money Transfer
December 11, 2008 at 4:26 pm

This is very interesting info. It’s helpful to have access to these kinds of articles.
2 Mark
December 12, 2008 at 2:25 am

In my story at Lets Japan, I describe the scams. The scam part happens in the initial call to the target. The victim is persuaded that the caller is a relative in trouble. Once convinced, the elderly victim is told to bring her cell phone to the bank, get the money from the ATM, then deposit the money into the scammer’s account. (Or take the cash to a meeting point.) The con artists give all the account numbers by phone. Old people talking on their cell phone at the ATM is a signal of possible fraud going on. Other frauds are listed in my articles.

http://www.letsjapan.markmode.com/index.php/2008/10/24/public-cops-watch-elderly-at-atms/

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