### d. "Katari" sales

Posing as employees of public offices or representatives of entrusted companies, perpetrators:

· Sell expensive fire extinguisher by telling victims that “we come from the fire department. The installation of fire extinguishers is required under law”; and

· Undertake antenna and receiver installation work at exorbitant fees by telling victims that “we come from Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK). You need work for switching to terrestrial digital TV broadcasting.”

### e. “Genya” sales, certification scams and their secondary damage

“Genya” sales are the tactics to sell land that has little utility value and cannot be resold, such as wild land and faraway forests for prices several hundred times higher than cost by pretending that prices of the land would skyrocket in the near future and purchasers can sell it at very high prices. Certification scams are the tactics to defraud people of money on the pretext of expenses for teaching materials, tuitions and other costs for acquiring fictitious or official qualifications and certificates.

Victims of “genya” sales or certification scams may suffer secondary damage from fraudulent claims for exorbitant payments of surveying the purchased land or fees to cancel registration, with fraud perpetrators telling them that “we found a potential buyer of your land. You can resell the land for high prices if survey is done” or “you have yet to complete correspondence courses you have signed up for previously. Unless you cancel the registration, you may have to pay very high tuitions.”

In particularly vicious cases, fraud perpetrations visited homes of land owners with those who posed as potential land buyers to make the land owners believe their resale offers.

### f. New investment schemes

These schemes are designed to swindle large sums of money, with fraud perpetrators posing as brokerage services for “Loco London” $ ^{1} $ gold bullion trading and overseas commodity futures options trading $ ^{2} $ and telling victims that “this is an opportunity to make money for sure” or “we relay trading orders to major traders overseas.” They are mainly targeted at elderly people with little investment experience.

Note 1: The collective term for spot trading in gold between traders for London deliveries, which is usually means negotiation transactions conducted among banks, trading firms and other major international businesses via phones. There are some fraudulent commercial practices purported to be Loco London transactions.

2: Transactions to buy or sell rights to trade futures at a predetermined price by the preset date on overseas commodity futures markets.

### g. Others

· Illegal pyramid schemes to recruit members to join a group by having them purchase expensive products and leading them to believe that they can have large amounts of compensation permanently if they find subordinate members for the group when it is in fact difficult to obtain such compensation;

· “Appointment” sales scams to sell expensive products to victims by making calls to lure them, emphasizing very favorable terms such as “you have won a lottery”; and

· Confidence games where victims are stopped on streets on the pretext of questionnaire surveys, etc., lured into out-of-sight places and then pressed to purchase expensive products.

## 3 ) Status of clearances of wealth-building offenses

While the number of wealth-building offenses $ ^{1} $ cleared has been between some 10 to 20 cases a year, the number of arrests made has been on the rise in recent years. Due to a spate of large-scale cases, the amount of damage in 2008 reached some ¥158.0 billion, the highest in the last five years.

Amid the ongoing recession, it is feared that wealth-building offenses carried out with claims of high dividends may increase going forward.

Note 1: Offenses involving violations of the Act on Regulation of Receiving of Capital Subscription, Deposits, and Interest Rates, etc. (hereinafter referred to as the “Investment Deposit and Interest Rate Act”), the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act and the Act on Prevention of Unlimited Chain System.