A famous delinquent in Sugamo since junior high school…The Badass Life of the “Giant Man Boss” of the Cambodian Special Fraud Group

He loves cabarets and girls’ bars, borrowing money to go out drinking. When he was asked to pay back the money, he would say, ‘Just wait a little longer,’ and run away. In the end, he borrowed money from a dangerous place and it was rumored that he was being chased by the yakuza.

On April 11, 19 members of a Cambodian special fraud group were arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department. The group is believed to have posed as NTT employees and called Japan from there, swindling people out of their electronic money, saying, ‘We have registered with a pay site, but there are unpaid fees.

The arrest was triggered by an e-mail sent to the Japanese Embassy in Cambodia in January of this year, saying, “I’ve been scammed at a hotel, and they won’t let me out. I need your help. Local police searched the luxury hotel and secured 19 Japanese men and others on suspicion of illegal stay. They were deported to Japan on April 11 and arrested on suspicion of fraud. There have been at least 75 similar cases since last April,” said a reporter from the society department of a national newspaper.

The suspect, Hiroki Okamoto, 38, is considered the “boss” of this fraud group. Okamoto is believed to have played a central role in the organization, putting other members under house arrest and forcing them to commit fraud. In fact, the suspect Okamoto used a different name when he was in Japan. A local acquaintance said, “His hometown is Otsuka, Tokyo.

His hometown is in the Otsuka/Sugamo area of Tokyo, and he went by the name of ‘Daiki Shiiba’ among his friends. I remember that his surname was changed to Okamoto when his parents remarried or something. He has always been a delinquent, a so-called “semi-grebe. When I saw the video of the arrest, I immediately recognized him as Sheeba. I recognized him immediately.

Okamoto is a big man, perhaps 190 cm tall, with tattoos on both arms. At the time of his arrest, he was glaring at those around him with a sharp look in his eye, and was known as one of the “baddest guys” in his hometown since junior high school.

Sheba transferred from Higashimurayama to Otsuka Junior High School when he was in the second year of junior high school. Sheba was a huge man even then, and he had that look in his eyes. No serious student would go near him. He hung out with delinquents and sometimes came to school and sometimes didn’t.” (A classmate from junior high school)

It seems that as soon as he graduated from junior high school, he began to engage in criminal activities. A local senior who knew Okamoto well revealed, “I heard that the suspect’s mother was a single mother and worked at a restaurant.

I heard that his mother was a single mother and worked at a restaurant. I believe she also had a younger sister. Sheba went to high school in Tokyo but dropped out after a year or so. After that, he hung around without a regular job, and after a while, he started to get involved in fraud.

Okamoto told people around him that he introduced a job carrying things from coin-operated lockers to a junior colleague, and that the latter got arrested.

I think he made him do something like an outing. I don’t know the details, but I think he had his crew help him with the scam from that time on.

Okamoto, who also liked to drink, opened a bar in a building in Ikebukuro in 2002. The name of the bar was “Shi BAR,” taken from his own surname. The bar thrived with acquaintances, but he was often seen drunk in Ikebukuro.

Shiiba was always the type to drink until he was tongue-tied. Although he hid it, he also had a tattoo by that time. Shiiba Bar” was closed less than three years later due to financial difficulties.

It seems that behind the bar’s financial difficulties was Okamoto’s spending spree.

He spent 50,000-60,000 yen every day at cabarets and girls’ bars. He borrowed a lot of money and never paid it back, so there was a lot of anger in his hometown.

Okamoto, saddled with debts, apparently chose Cambodia as his escape destination. He left for Cambodia in November ’21 after the Metropolitan Police Department obtained an arrest warrant for a domestic fraud case in September ’18, and is believed to have united 19 people to commit a special fraud.

Okamoto has been involved in criminal activities since he was a teenager and disappeared, mired in debt. His redemption, which will take a long time, is about to begin.

From the May 5, 2023 issue of FRIDAY