Next bad horoscope I get, I’m pressing charges!

Fraud is a strange thing when you think about it. Although simply defined as deceit to deprive someone of a legal right or money, that kind of thing happens all the time. I mean, how much money have we as a society handed over to Disney while they perpetuate the lie that a mouse and duck can talk and have agreed that one should only wear pants and the other only a shirt?

Bearing that in mind, we have an interesting arrest by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police in which eight men and women were accused of defrauding at least 10 people across Japan out of a total exceeding 50 million yen (US$347,000). They did this by operating a “fake fortune-telling website” and giving people fortunes such as, “You will definitely win the lottery today.”

They were reported by a woman in her 70s who had been using the “fake” fortune-telling website since May 2024 and made over 350 money transfers throughout the course of 10 months that totaled 7.37 million yen ($51,000).

▼ News report showing two of the arrested suspects, each of whom look very intimidating in very different ways

While it’s good to see fraudsters getting what they deserve and the prevention of other people being victimized by them, there’s something bothering me about this case… Let’s see if the online comments can pinpoint the problem here.

“Think about it. If they could win the lottery with their power, why would they work as fortune-tellers.”
“If people want to increase their chances of winning the lottery they should use that money for more tickets. Not that it would help much.”
“That one guy has a face scarier than any horror game I’ve ever played.”
“The lottery is kind of fraud too, in a way.”
“These kinds of people will never stop taking money from others unless the penalties are heavier.”
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 350 times…”
“I wonder what the market value for fortune-tellers is these days.”
“Don’t all fortune-tellers do what they did?”

Thank you! I was beginning to think I was the only one wondering that last question. To say these people are “fake fortune-tellers” would strongly imply the existence of real fortune-tellers, wouldn’t it? I try to keep an open mind about this kind of stuff, but I also believe that if someone tells me they can see the future, there’s a 99.9999999999999 percent chance they’re either lying or mistaken.

So, why did these people get arrested when other fortune-tellers continue to do what they do?

Fortune-tellers and psychics tend to walk that fine line between fraud and entertainment by keeping predictions comfortably ambiguous. Assuming these people were smart enough to put an “entertainment purposes only” disclaimer on their website, they still may have crossed the line by being too specific in saying the victims would win the lottery “today” which could be demonstrably false. That is unless they try to get off on the technicality that the Japanese language often omits the subject of sentences so what they said literally translates to, “Definitely winning the lottery today.”

But even with that excuse, the other transgression that lands them in the category of fraud is the clear-cut repeated attempts to get money out of people. Any law-abiding fortune-teller would charge you for a one-time session and let you be on your way, but these people were clearly stringing their victims along in order to get 350 separate payments from one, and that’s precisely what distinguishes this fraud from “real” fortune-telling.

To put it another way, it’d be like if Disney charged one time to see their semi-naked animals that don’t exist do fun stuff, that would be fine. However, if they lured you into some kind of scheme where you’d have to pay them a monthly fee for… Hmm, hang on…

Source: FNN Online Prime, Hachima Kiko
Featured image: Pakutaso
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