Police arrested six people and put another on a wanted list Monday on suspicion of swindling 10 million yen from elderly people who had earlier suffered losses from fraudulent sales of undeveloped rural property.
In autumn 1996, Michinori Inoue, 48, a former employee of a real estate company in Tokyo, and six others allegedly approached a 78-year-old man in Miyagi Prefecture, and two others who own undeveloped properties in southern Hokkaido, according to police officials. The three had been victims of a previous scam, in which a number of elderly people throughout Japan were lured into making investments in rural properties, after being told they would get hefty returns. They were then left with nearly useless land in undeveloped, mountainous areas.
Inoue told the three that he would arrange for the tax-free sale of their properties at a high price, the officials said. Each of the victims paid 3 million yen to 4 million yen to the suspects in commission fees. However, the suspects faked their business undertakings concerning the sale of the land, the properties were left unsold and the money was never returned, they alleged.
Investigators suspect that Inoue and his associates previously cheated some 300 people into paying them a total of about 1.2 billion yen in a similar manner, officials said. Two of the suspects had earlier been arrested in 1991 in a similar scam.