Luckily there’s an easy way to tell if you’re dealing with a legitimate law enforcement officer or a con artist.

Bike riding has been largely unregulated in Japan for several decades, but big changes came at the start of this month with the introduction of the blue ticket (“aoikippu” in Japanese) system. This new legal framework brings bike riding closer to driving a car, and while cyclists don’t need a license, they will now have to pay fines for violating the rules of the road.

As we recently discussed, things such as running red lights, using a cell phone or umbrella while riding, or riding against the flow of traffic now carry potential fines of up to 12,000 yen (US$77), and failure to pay can result in criminal charges and a mandated court appearance. But with the public still getting accustomed to the new rules, there’s also ample opportunity for scam artists to prey on apprehensive cyclists, and in just two weeks since the start of the blue ticket system, there have been at least four instances of scam artists posing as police officers and trying to collect payments for claimed infractions.

The first of these occurred on April 4, when a bicycling high school student in the town of Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, was flagged down by a man who said he’d failed to use proper hand signals when making a turn, and then collected 2,000 yen from the teen as supposed payment of his fine. Three other incidents took place on consecutive days from April 12-14. On the 12th, a bicycling 43-year-old man in Oyama, Tochigi Prefecture was told to stop by the man in the passenger seat of a car that approached him, saying he’d run a red light and now would have to pay 15,000 yen. The cyclist begrudgingly handed over the money, but when he came upon a police car 10 minutes later, he stopped to tell the officer he didn’t think it was fair that he’d had to pay for an honest mistake, at which point the officer told him he’d been scammed.

A two-conman team was also involved in an attempt in Muroran, Hokkaido Prefecture, on the morning of April 13, when they stopped a junior high school student who was bicycling to school at the time, perhaps hoping that fear of being late for class would pressure him to speedily hand over the 5,000 yen they said he had to pay for failing to use hand signals. However, the savvy kid realized that something fishy was going on, and when he asked to see the men’s police badges, they ran off.

Things didn’t go as well for a HS student in Kagoshima City, Kagoshima Prefecture on the night of the 14th, however. While he was on his bike, a car with two men inside pulled up next to him, saying “Stop, we’re the police” and telling him he’d have to pay 6,000 yen for failing to use hand signals. The scammers applied extra pressure to get him to pay up then and there, saying that if he tried to pay via bank transfer he’d also have to pay interest accrued on the fine during the payment processing time, so he handed over the cash to them instead.

The distances between Hiroshima (circled in red on the map below), Tochigi (orange), Hokkaido (green). and Kagoshima (blue) suggest that separate fraudsters were involved in the different incidents, and that criminals in other parts of Japan might be trying out similar tactics.

There are a few common elements to the incidents, which serve as things to be on the lookout for to protect yourself from falling victim to these schemes. First, and most importantly, the actual police will never ask you to pay a blue ticket fine on the spot. Following the scams, multiple police departments have put out reminder statements that on-the-spot payment isn’t allowed, and you’re supposed to instead pay at either a post office or bank.

Second, in none of the incidents were the scammers wearing police uniforms or riding in official patrol cars. While Japan does have plainclothes detectives and unmarked police vehicles, they aren’t normally used for traffic duty. It’s highly unlikely that any jurisdiction would approve of undercover tactics for enforcing the new bicycling rules, and failure to produce a badge after claiming to have the authority to issue fines is another certain sign that you’re dealing with a scammer.

▼ A legitimate blue ticket stop should involve a badge but no cash, not the other way around.

It’s also worth noting that three of the scams involved failure to use hand signals. Technically, these are required under the new regulations. Cyclists are supposed to indicate turns (an arm extended to the side for a turn in that direction, or bent at the elbow with the fingertips pointing upwards for a turn in the opposite direction) and stops (extended with the fingertips pointing down and palm facing back), and with a fine of 5,000 yen for failing to comply. However, with one of the criteria for the issuance of blue tickets being that the behavior is unsafe, hand signals are in a gray area in that they require taking a hand off of the handlebars, so strict compliance could be considered a safety hazard for the rider. It’s perhaps for that reason that the hand signal requirement is being less emphasized in public awareness campaigns and posters than many of the other new rules. Not using hand signals seems like one of the technical infractions that police officers are most likely to let slide, and the comparative lack of pressure to comply by the rule might also make it an attractive excuse for scam artists to demand payment.

Source: Sankei Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, HTB News, TBS News Dig
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: D Maps (edited by SoraNews24), Pakutaso
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!