Customers and brokers are working together to demand tens of millions of yen… Real Estate Agencies Scream Over Frequent “New Scams

“My company deals with investment condominiums, and in August of ’16 In August 2004, we started working with an agency called ‘A’. However, around January 2005, a client introduced by A made an accusation that ‘your company falsified my personal information in signing the contract,’ which I had no knowledge of at all,” he said.

Mr. Yamada (a pseudonym), an executive at a major real estate company in Tokyo, said, “The client who was introduced to me by A was told that A had falsified my personal information in the process of signing the contract. Behind the allegations, he says, is an “alleged fraud” perpetrated on Mr. Yamada by the client in collusion with A, the brokerage company. Mr. Yamada continued.

Around March 2005, I introduced this client to a studio apartment for investment. The client actually lied about his income and concealed the fact that he had debts. However, in order to “make him out to be a suitable buyer,” we were so desperate to get the contract that we falsified and covered up his personal information. The client demanded cancellation of the contract and compensation in the amount of 6 million yen. The client seemed to be trying to get money by asking for compensation, but of course we did not do any such falsification.

The claims were so inexplicable that we investigated the customer in question and found that A, who acted as an intermediary for the customer, and B, a former real estate agent, had worked together to give instructions to the customer. The documents sent to us by the client included statements that if the client did not agree to compensation, we would consult with the police and the media, almost like threats.

In other words, the scheme of the case was this. The clients work together with brokers to lie about their income, cover up their debts, and submit false documents before signing a contract. However, afterwards, the client claims, “I provided correct information, but Mr. Yamada’s company unilaterally falsified my personal information in order to conclude the contract. This constitutes an illegal contract,” and demanded a large amount of compensation.

Even when Yamada’s company denied that it had falsified the information, the client continued to demand compensation in an aggressive stance. However, when Yamada’s side hinted at legal action, his attitude changed drastically.

Mr. Yamada continues.

“Broker A suddenly submitted a ‘letter of admission,’ in which he admitted that he had falsified his clients’ personal information and that he had tried to deceive our company by doing so. In other words, we were being accused of allegations that were completely untrue and were being demanded to pay huge amounts of compensation.

Mr. Yamada says he was exhausted at the time from dealing with the case day in and day out. The allegations were cleared, and the case seemed to be resolved without incident.

But then another client contacted us, using the exact same tactics, demanding cancellation of the contract and compensation. We have already learned that a real estate agent in Osaka has been giving instructions to the customer. And this time, they are demanding a large amount of compensation, 20 million yen.

People in the company, including myself, are exhausted from having to deal with the situation. This is my guess, but I believe that a new kind of fraud group targeting real estate agents has emerged. I believe there are other companies besides ours that have fallen victim to the same thing.”

When we sent a letter of inquiry to “A,” the brokerage firm, regarding the fact that they falsified the amount of clients’ income, concealed their debts, and thereby demanded termination of the contract and compensation from the company where Mr. Yamada worked, they responded as follows, stating that they had no doubt introduced clients to Mr. Yamada’s company The company’s response was as follows.

“As for the falsification of documents (concerning customer information), we are currently investigating whether the documents were falsified at the time our staff received them from the customer or whether our staff falsified them.”

He also denied that he had colluded with the clients he had mediated with to cancel the contract or demand compensation, saying, “We are not involved in any way.

Mr. Yamada responded to our interview with this magazine, showing fatigue from start to finish. Real estate agents continue to scream as a new type of fraud is being developed into a scheme.