A company in Nagoya called Tobila Systems, which develops fraud prevention systems, released a report on July 15 analyzing police data about scam calls from January to May this year.
They found that about 40% of victims in a certain type of phone scam—where the caller pretends to be a police officer—were in their 20s and 30s. Overall, 55.5% of all "ore ore" (it's me) scam victims were under 65 years old, which is more than those aged 65 and older (44.5%).
This marks a big shift. In 2022, only 1.8% of victims were under 65. In 2023, it rose to 5.7%. But in 2024, it jumped to 33.6%, and by the end of May, it reached 55.5%.
The sharp rise is mainly due to more victims in their 20s and 30s. In 2022, only 0.5% of victims were in that age group. It grew to 2.7% in 2023, then 13.5% in 2024, and by May this year, it had risen to 29.6%.
The main reason seems to be a growing number of scams where fraudsters pretend to be police officers to steal money. Young people are falling for this trick more often.
Between January and May this year, there were 10,905 reported fraud cases. Of these, 3,816 (about 35%) involved scammers pretending to be police officers. Among these cases, 768 victims were in their 30s and 703 in their 20s—together making up about 40% of all victims in this category.
Tobila Systems also surveyed around 1,200 people. When asked if they knew about the rise in police-impersonation scams, 45.4% of people in their 20s and 32.6% in their 30s said they didn't know. The company believes that a lack of awareness and low sense of risk may be contributing to the increase in younger victims.
by MagazineKey4532