Lookout for Dark Side Job Robbery: The Pitiful State After Arrest

Another applicant for a black market job robbery has been caught.

On October 4, Ritsuyuki Kawasaki, 29, a company employee living in Ichikawa City, Chiba Prefecture, was arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department’s Investigation Division 1 on suspicion of burglary and residential burglary. He is believed to have been a lookout for a robbery that occurred in Nerima Ward, Tokyo. This brings the total number of arrests in the case to four.

The alleged incident occurred just before 3:00 a.m. on September 28. A group of criminals entered a house in Nerima Ward by smashing the windowpane of the first floor living room with a tool. They beat a man in his 50s and his son in his 20s inside the house, injuring them. and took two high-end wristwatches, including a Rolex, and other items worth 1.2 million yen before fleeing.

The five members of the criminal group, including the suspect Kawasaki, did not know each other’s faces or names until they joined forces. One of the arrested suspects stated, “I don’t know who they are (the other suspects), but they are my friends. They met up at a family restaurant in Tokyo and drove to the residence where the crime took place in a truck, responding to posts on social networking sites about ‘same-day pay part-time jobs,’ etc., and are believed to have been involved in the case,” said a reporter from the society section of a national newspaper.

A photographer for this magazine photographed the pathetic appearance of Kawasaki immediately after his arrest. When the suspect emerged from the police station, his shoulders slumped and he looked downcast from start to finish. His appearance showed a sense of regret and shame.

He was paid 100,000 yen per day just to transport the victim.

There were several people in charge of giving orders, and they used different accounts for different purposes. The communication to the guards and the perpetrators, including the Kawasaki suspects, was made through “Signal,” a highly confidential communication app. When the perpetrators were arrested, the app had been deleted.

In recruiting perpetrators for black market robberies, high rewards with no risk are often emphasized, such as “white cases” and “100,000 yen per day just for transporting luggage. However, …….

When you apply for a job, you will be asked to send an image of your photo ID and to specify your family structure. Once the unknown perpetrators join forces with each other, the orders of the instructor change drastically. They demand that the target residents “beat them up so many times that they kill them,” or “beat them up and rob them,” he says. If they refused or hesitated, they were threatened with “You’ll get hurt badly” or “You don’t mind if your family gets hurt, do you?

Some were even told, “There is a [antisocial] organization behind this. Some of the perpetrators were told, “There’s a [antisocial] organization behind you, so be prepared. The commanders are controlling the perpetrators with fear, putting them in a state of mind where they cannot escape. In some cases, the promised rewards are not paid at all. The perpetrators and the guards are probably pawns to be discarded. No matter how many people are arrested, the core of the criminal group, the instructor, is not hurt or itchy,” said the same person.

(The same applies to the above.) The directing officers often send their orders from overseas, such as the Philippines and Cambodia. This is one of the reasons for the difficulties in the investigation. According to the National Police Agency, during the three-year period from September 2009 to September this year, there were 93 cases of robbery and theft by “anonymous and mobile crime groups (Tokuryu)” in at least 22 prefectures.