Year	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008
Category	Number of offenses cleared (cases)	16	20	24	9	12	10	9	17	12
Number of suspects arrested (persons)	102	88	119	116	72	78	41	73	86	117
Number of legal persons arrested (persons)	0	1	1	3	2	4	6	4	3	4
Number of victims (persons)	10,214	9,232	209,597	84,428	6,628	8,934	3,251	14,429	30,230	64,016
Amount of damage	¥23,407.94 million	¥16,304.28 million	¥139,304.66 million	¥189,044.49 million	¥27,576.67 million	¥39,284.57 million	¥10,715.43 million	¥43,732.06 million	¥80,785.80 million	¥157,974.06 million

Note 1: The number of victims includes the number of capital subscribers to schemes that violate the Act on Regulation of Receiving of Capital Subscription, Deposits, and Interest Rates, Etc. (deposits)

Note 2: The amount of damage includes amounts of capital subscriptions to schemes that violate the Act on Regulation of Receiving of Capital Subscription, Deposits, and Interest Rates, Etc. (deposits) and damage in frauds related to violations of the Act.

## 4 ) Main tactics of wealth-building offenses

Wealth-building offenses often cause the large number and amount of damage as they are carried out over a widespread area with catch-phrases of the safety with “principal guarantees” similar to deposits and savings and the remarkable advantage of “high dividends.”

In recent years, there are a number of cases disguised as investment management in overseas markets that are hard to monitor. There were also schemes incorporating the system for contingent fees in accordance with the number of new capital subscribers recruited.

## (3) Current Status of Black-Market Finance Offenses

## 1 ) Transition of the black-market finance problems and law revisions

The black-market finance problem came to be recognized as a serious social issue around 2002, and the Goryokai case $ ^{1} $ and the Yao case $ ^{2} $ came as a great shock to the Japanese society. Given such a black-market finance situation, the Act on Control of Moneylending was revised twice, in August 2003 and December 2006, to toughen regulations on collection practices and strengthen punishment of law violations, and also to introduce limits on aggregate lending to each borrower and lower maximum allowable interest rates by June 2010.

## 2 ) Status of clearances of black-market finance offenses

The status of clearances of black-market finance offenses $ ^{3} $ in 2008 is shown in Table 3 below. Of the total clearances, no-registration offenses numbered 309 cases, high interest rate offenses 339 cases (overlapping counts allowed for both), and offenses involving Boryokudan organized crime groups 146 cases (accounting for 33.4% of all offenses cleared in 2008).

Black-market finance offenses involve typical modus operandi, such as

· 090 finance operations for lending and collection using cell phones as a means of communication without setting up shops; and

· System finance operations to lend money to the same borrowers successively by sharing information on debtors among black-market finance operators,

In addition, black-market finance offenses may be disguised as sales and leases of merchandise, including

· Watch rentals where operators rent out luxury-brand watches to borrowers suggesting they bring them to pawn shops and collect exorbitant interest on the pretext of rental fees.

In many cases of 090 finance and system finance offenses, cell phones and deposit accounts under other people’s names are procured and utilized for communication and receipts of interest, respectively.