To serve and protect.

Convenience store workers really don’t get enough credit. Often working for minimum wage, they have a wide array of duties, including sales, banking, postal services, and photocopier technical support, to name a few. But they’re also on the front lines of protecting people from increasingly rampant fraud in Japan.

The reason for this is that in cases of “special fraud” (tokushu sagi), scammers often ask for payment in the form of electronic currency that can be acquired through prepaid cards sold at convenience stores. These cards can be convenient ways to make online purchases for those who don’t have or would rather not use credit cards, but they require a fair bit of technical know-how to use.

So, when a convenience store clerk spots an elderly person fumbling their way through buying some WebMoney cards, they tend to get suspicious. That’s what happened on 22 July at a Lawson store in the city of Tomigusuku, Okinawa.

An elderly customer who was a regular at the store came in and seemed noticeably more erratic than usual. The women behind the counter, Yoshie Sawada and Naomi Takaesu, talked to the man, who told them he had won 700 million yen and needed to purchase a prepaid e-currency card worth 3,000 yen to cover the “handling fee.”

The man also showed the workers the message he received on his smartphone, and they could immediately tell it was a scam. However, when they tried to convince him of this, he refused to hear it, telling them: “I won. It can’t be a scam.”

Finding it hard to disprove the man’s logic that didn’t exist in the first place, the two women kept him in the store and called in the police, who eventually explained the situation to him. The women were worried the man would just go to another convenience store if he wasn’t convinced then and there, so did what they could to make him see the light.

In response to their heroic efforts, Sawada and Takaesu were given letters of appreciation by the Tomigusuku Police Department. Police Chief Yoichi Ohama said the women’s “cool-headedness and sense of justice, combined with the store’s high degree of awareness, resulted in the prevention of financial loss.”

Many readers of the news were sympathetic to the victim, while others shared their own stories of attempted scams, showing just how widespread the problem has become.

“I got home from work last night and checked my answering machine. There were two messages telling me how to transfer my money. Seems like having a landline is more of a risk than a benefit.”
“It is kind of weird how you have to pay transfer fees even for a real lottery.”
“I don’t trust anyone, so I’m fine. But it must be hard for those who do have faith in people.”
“They saved that guy, but I wonder how many victims there are out there that don’t make the news.”
“Did the guy think he entered a contest or lottery for 700 million and just forgot about it?”
“That must have been hard for the staff. The guy probably thought they were the ones trying to scam him.”
“I got an email with the subject ‘It’s your real mom.’ It’s like they’re not even trying anymore.”
“If he was into the lottery, he’d know that they always make you contact them when you win, not the other way around.”
“All that for 3,000 yen seems rather small-time.”

Of course, the 3,000 yen was just an initial transfer. Normally, these scams keep the first money request small so the victim is more willing to try even if it seems implausible. Then they string the person along with subsequent requests for money, gauging his trust in them as they go to decide whether to increase the amount and to make up excuses like, “You have to pay this tax” or “You need to open an overseas account to qualify.” The more the person buys into it, the more willing they are to continue, since they’ve already begun sinking money into it.

The thing these scammers rely on the most is finding people who are so desperate they’re willing to look past the obvious gaps in logic simply because they want whatever the offer is to be real so badly. In that way, it seems the best way to reduce these kinds of scams is to improve the overall quality of life for people so they won’t feel the kind of desperation that feeds fraud. Then, we wouldn’t have to burden convenience store workers with this too.

Source: Okinawa Times, Golden Times, Yahoo! Japan News
Images: ©SoraNews24, Pakutaso
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