Beware of ``Handwriting verification required'' Instructions to mail handwritten notes to police stations - New method of special fraud - Metropolitan Police Department

A new type of scam has been discovered in which people pretend to be police officers to defraud money, and a new method has been discovered in which they instruct people to send papers written in hiragana or other handwritten characters to actual police stations, saying things like ``handwriting analysis is required.'' This appears to be a way to trick people into believing that they are real police officers, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has issued flyers and other warnings to warn people, saying, ``The police will never make such calls.''

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According to the agency's Anonymous and Mobile Crime Group Task Force, 17 envelopes containing handwritten hiragana and alphabet letters were delivered to Ikebukuro Police Station between April and early November. When we contacted the four men and women in Niigata and Saga prefectures who knew the sender's name, it was determined that the sender was a ``fake police scam.''

All four first received a phone call from someone who claimed to be a postal worker and said, ``There was a Yu-Pack package in your name that contained 2 million yen in cash and a bank card.'' ``If you don't know anything about it, you should file a damage report,'' he advised.

After that, I was contacted by someone claiming to be an Ikebukuro police officer, who directed me to LINE. They were instructed to handwrite hiragana, alphabets, and numbers on a piece of paper and mail it to the police station, saying, ``We need a handwriting test to prove that they are victims.'' They were also asked not to write the sender's name on the envelope, and to send an image of the handwritten paper via LINE.

He also received phone calls from people pretending to be Treasury officials or prosecutors, saying things like, ``You're on the blacklist. We need to investigate your finances.''

Some of the four people told them their financial institution account balances and followed the instructions to open a crypto asset account, but they realized this midway through and suffered no financial damage.

A senior official at the Tokuryu Task Force pointed out, ``Maybe by specifying the address of an actual police station, it gives credibility.'' If you receive a similar call, ``Please hang up, check the correct contact information, and call back.''