Japan plans to combat scams by taking elderly people’s bank cards away: ‘people are going to panic’
- Japan’s National Police Agency has proposed suspending the bank card of anyone over the age of 65 who hasn’t used their card in more than a year
- Some worry that the proposal would make older people’s lives more difficult, but there’s also a growing recognition of the need to stop scammers
While the scope of the proposal is relatively limited, some older Japanese have raised concerns that it may prevent them from accessing their bank accounts, and fear additional restrictions could be imposed if it does not prove effective in halting the scams.
Yet it’s clear that there’s an urgent need for safeguards. In the first six months of this year alone, scammers in Japan tricked people out of around 15 billion yen (US$106 million), according to police statistics.
Phone fraud is not a new phenomenon, having existed for several decades in Japan despite a series of campaigns to educate people about the risks.
One of the most common swindles involves scammers who pretend to be bank representatives and call targets warning them that their account is overdrawn and that they must complete a transfer immediately to avoid a large bank charge.
Another is the ore, ore scam, meaning “hey, hey” in Japanese, which involves the caller professing to be a relative or friend of the target and asking for help. Often, the scammer will claim that he or she has been in a minor traffic accident and needs money to pay the other driver to avoid involving the police.
Japan’s growing elder abuse foretells what Singapore, Hong Kong may face
While many potential targets immediately hang up, elderly people who are less aware of the scammers’ methods can be easier to fool. There have even been cases of older victims making several payments to confidence tricksters before realising their mistake.
In one notorious case from 2018 that’s credited with shining a light on the problem, scammers managed to talk an 84-year-old Tokyo woman out of 82.5 million yen (US$585,000).
Japanese police have made relatively few arrests in connection with phone scams, partly because it is difficult to trace pay-as-you-go phones that can be quickly discarded.
The banks and the police have tried to put a stop to it, but it’s really difficult because all [scammers] need is a mobile phone
The new government proposal to suspend older people’s bank cards after 12 months of non-use has drawn mixed reactions from the public, with many recognising that something has to be done to halt the scams.
“Anything that can be done should be done because I hear of so many of these cases,” said Tomoko Oono, a retiree from Saitama prefecture north of Tokyo who used to work in a bank.
“The banks and the police have tried to put a stop to it, but it’s really difficult because all they [scammers] need is a mobile phone,” she said.
“But at the same time, I am not sure if limiting old people’s access to their bank accounts is a good idea either. My mother still lives by herself, and she uses cash all the time because she is not able to do things like online shopping,” she added. “I am not sure how she would manage without being able to get cash. And what about people who live in the countryside and there are no banks nearby, and they cannot get money out of an ATM?”
Similar objections have been raised on social media, with comments on the Livedoor news portal pointing out that the proposal was effectively “a deposit blockade” that would make life more difficult for the elderly.
“If people can’t use their cards, I think a lot of people are going to suddenly panic,” read one post.
