We once described the author of this article, Jake Adelstein, as "One crazy Mofo." More after the jump.
From CrimeReads, October 3:
In 2011, Japan cracked down on organized crime. The Yakuza promptly relocated to the Cambodian seaside.
The yakuza have always been pretty good at reading the room, or as they say in Japan, “reading the air”. When Japan finally decided to slam the door on their more traditional lines of work back in 2011 with a wave of laws that made it tricky to extort, traffic, or gamble without drawing a whole lot of heat, the yakuza did what all good businessmen do: they pivoted. And where did they go? Cambodia. Because, really, where better to set up shop than a place where the police are underpaid, corruption is practically a cultural pastime, and you can still buy off the local muscle with a well-timed “donation”?
It started with the basics—human trafficking, prostitution, the usual suspects. But it didn’t take long for the yakuza to level up their game. They saw Cambodia as more than just a place to smuggle and hustle. No, this tropical paradise had the infrastructure for something far more lucrative—cyber scams. The kind where you convince old ladies back in Japan that they owe money on imaginary phone bills, using a labyrinth of smartphones and anonymous bank accounts to move the money around faster than the Cambodian cops could look up from their lunch. It was a gold mine, one built on desperation, and the real stroke of genius? Using their own people as the foot soldiers.
The yakuza, a term broadly used to cover the 24 designated organized crime groups legally operating in Japan, have seen their numbers plummet in the last decade. While there were 80,000 yakuza in 2011, the number of active members is now below 24,000, according to the National Police Agency. Laws enacted nationwide in 2011 have put a serious dent in their business.
In recent years, the Japanese yakuza have expanded their criminal portfolios in Cambodia to include sophisticated fraud operations, particularly in cybercrime. These syndicates run scams involving online fraud, including phishing and investment schemes, often targeting victims in Japan or other wealthy countries. One particularly insidious practice involves holding individuals—usually fellow Japanese or other East Asian nationals—captive. These individuals are lured into Cambodia with promises of legitimate work, only to find themselves trapped in compounds where they are forced to participate in scam operations. The victims of these operations are coerced into working long hours under the threat of violence, essentially becoming prisoners of the syndicates.
The Sihanoukville Scams: A Case Study
A grim illustration of this trend came to light in early 2023 when Cambodian authorities cracked down on a transnational scam operation in Sihanoukville, arresting and deporting 19 Japanese nationals suspected of running phone scams that targeted Japanese citizens. These men were detained in poor conditions, with some claiming they were lured by promises of lucrative work but were instead trapped in grueling environments. Forced to work under threat of violence, with limited freedom and harsh treatment, these individuals were little more than slaves in a digital-age crime syndicate.
According to NHK (the BBC of Japan) and other sources, Sihanoukville, a coastal city known for its beaches and casinos, has recently gained a reputation as a hotspot for organized crime. In the case of the Japanese yakuza, the suspects were allegedly operating out of a beachside hotel. Police raids revealed an entire operation centered around sophisticated fraud schemes, in which the Japanese nationals were forced to place scam calls to elderly victims back in Japan. The scams involved impersonating government officials or lawyers, convincing their victims to transfer large sums of money to resolve fictitious legal disputes or tax issues.
In this particular case, the yakuza backed network was uncovered after a Tokyo woman in her 60s reported losing around ¥250,000 ($1800) to the scam. She was tricked into believing she had unpaid bills from NTT Docomo, one of Japan’s biggest mobile phone providers. This wasn’t a one-off. It’s estimated the group was involved in over 75 similar cases. As you’d expect, the police didn’t take too kindly to it.
Many of the perpetrators, were also victims in a sense. Forced to take part in the scam, they didn’t exactly have the freedom to stroll out and catch a tuk-tuk to the beach. One of them, desperate, sent an SOS email to the Japanese embassy in Cambodia, pleading for help. That message cracked the whole thing wide open....
....MUCH MORE
*From March 2011, ten days after the Tōhoku earthquake and then the tsunami that destroyed the Fukushima nuclear power plant:
Japanese Mafia Steps Up With Disaster Aid
The writer, Jake Adelstein, is one crazy mo-fo.
He is the pre-eminent Tokyo police-beat reporter writing in English, specializing in vice and organized crime.
He was also the first American to work for a Japanese newspaper as a Japanese language reporter.
His reporting of the UCLA organ transplant scam (because of their tattoos Yakuza often have kidney and especially liver problems) garnered him a few death threats and from time to time his sources decide to beat him to a pulp.
In 2022 he penned a piece for Asia Times that we linked in Japan: "The world’s third richest country is facing rising poverty".
We also have quite a few links to Yakuza stories, most recently:
Former yakuza office repurposed to become elderly care facility
Which is of a piece with a couple previous posts:- "In Japan, yakuza are reduced to stealing Pokémon cards"
- "Making a slow getaway: Japan's anti-yakuza laws result in cohort of ageing gangsters"
"A Chinese businessman persuaded officials to establish a special economic zone in a remote part of Laos. The gamblers arrived first. Then came the drug runners and human traffickers."
