With only $100 million in endorsements, it can be hard to make ends meet.

I feel it’s safe to say that if I pretended to be baseball’s biggest superstar and asked someone to lend me some money, 99.99999999999 percent of people would say no, and many among those would also advise me to shove my bat somewhere I might not like. But it’s that other 0.00000000001 percent that scammers rely on.

Fortunately, it didn’t work out as a father-son team of criminals had hoped when they were arrested for their involvement in attempting to defraud a woman in her 80s out of 1 million yen (US$7,000). The two men, both Nepalese nationals living in Japan, and others of unknown nationalities took turns impersonating none other than Dodgers’ great Shohei Ohtani on messaging app Line and Facebook.

They sent the victim messages saying, “Because I’m the best person in the world, my insurance premiums are too high. I’ve had to pay tens of millions of yen in insurance premiums, but it’s still not enough. Can you help me pay 1 million yen in insurance premiums?”

The elderly woman agreed and the son then pretended to be Ohtani’s agent, saying he would travel to Tokyo to meet her and collect the money in cash. He actually lived in Tokyo too so didn’t have to travel far to get the money and then deposit most of it into the bank account of his father who lived elsewhere in Japan.

▼ News report about the son’s arrest

The details on what led to the arrests aren’t clearly reported, possibly because the investigation is still ongoing and police are looking to arrest other accomplices. However, it was reported that while the money was being collected, the woman asked to speak with Ohtani on the phone, but the man refused, saying that there was no time because his game was about to start.

It would seem that was when she got wise to the scam and contacted police, but we also can’t rule out that she was always onto them and the whole meeting was a set-up with the police’s knowledge. However it went down, the father and son are now both in custody and have admitted to the charge of conspiracy to commit fraud.

Readers of the news online were mostly amazed that someone could possibly believe Shohei Ohtani was struggling with cash, as others expressed in online comments that committing crime in the name of Ohtani was an especially heinous offence in Japan.

“They give Nepal a bad name.”
“If someone would fall for that, someone would fall for anything.”
“The woman probably has dementia. I hope they throw the book at these guys.”
“The idea that Ohtani has money trouble is hilarious.”
“I think we should all check on our elderly relatives.”
“How dare they use Ohtani’s name like that!”

It would seem that by committing fraud in the name of Japan’s most beloved celebrity, these two and the others involved might have an especially hard time in a court of their peers. This particular type of fraud, known as “special fraud” in Japan, is already considered a high priority for law enforcement and the legal system but special Ohtani fraud is a whole other league.

If he still wasn’t recovering his arm, I’d suggest inviting Ohtani himself to do the honors of throwing the book at them.

Source: NHK, Mainichi Shimbun, NTV News
Featured image: ©SoraNews24
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