Three Students high school students from Japan were arrested on charges of phone fraud, which authorities say netted them $4 million.
The 17-year-olds are believed to have carried out several Ore ore or "It's me" scams as they are known in Japan. Usually their targets were elderly people. The underage scammers would call their victims pretending to be a relative who had a problem.
They would ask a victim to transfer some (usually large) amount of money into a bank account to pay a lawyer, or yakuza gangsters and so on.
The three students were arrested Thursday when they attempted to make a withdrawal to withdraw more than $90,000 that had been deposited by a 60-year-old couple according to the NHK.
The couple apparently transferred the money after receiving a phone call from a person pretending to be their son. The scammers convinced them that their son needed the money because he had beaten a woman.
Δύο από τους μαθητές πιάστηκαν επ’αυτοφόρω, ενώ ο τρίτος αρνείται οποιαδήποτε εμπλοκή.
After conducting searches of the suspects' homes, police officers discovered 550 cards and names of the gang's victims. The names were linked to 160 phone scams carried out by the minors since July 2013, according to NHK.
Source: secnews.gr
