A Japanese man accused of defrauding an individual in his homeland over the phone from his base in Thailand has been extradited to Japan and arrested there, investigative sources said on Wednesday.
The arrest of Daisuke Ogawa, 49, is the latest in a series of cases in which scam groups were found to be targeting Japanese victims from locations in Southeast Asia.
Ogawa arrived at Haneda airport in Tokyo around 5.50am on Wednesday after being released from detention in Thailand.
Ogawa is suspected of defrauding a man in his seventies in Gifu Prefecture in central Japan in September by providing false information over the phone and tricking him into sending a cash card via postal mail, according to the sources.
The prefectural police suspect that Ogawa’s role in the scheme was to make phone calls.
Ogawa was one of two Japanese nationals among four individuals arrested by Thai police on Nov 8 for their alleged role in a phone scam targeting people in Japan. The two others arrested were Taiwanese.
The four men allegedly posed as bank staff or police officers to trick individuals in Japan into transferring funds to designated bank accounts with tactics including making false claims about debts.
According to the Japanese embassy in Thailand, more than 17,500 victims in Japan were conned out of 9 billion baht by the gang.
In a separate case, 25 Japanese nationals were arrested in Japan following extradition from Cambodia where they ran a similar phone scam operation.