Amateurs all over the place, random and indiscriminate”… Victims of “indiscriminate bondage robbery”, recruiter reveals too crude tactics.

A string of robberies in the Tokyo metropolitan area

“I was sleeping on the second floor of my house when I heard a loud ‘bang’ downstairs. I was woken up by my wife. When I went to check on her, I heard the sound of a window being smashed. The kids were banging on the floor with a stick they had been using to play with and yelling, ‘Is there someone in there? ‘ I went down the stairs while yelling, ‘They found me! I heard a shout of “Found!
I heard the sound of glass breaking again with a clatter, so the culprit must have escaped through the window. He must have cut himself on a shard of glass during the break-in, because there was a pool of blood in the first-floor hallway, which continued to the front of the room of his elderly mother, who lived with him. I shuddered to think what would have happened if someone had entered her room.”

The robbers broke into the home, tied up the occupants, assaulted them, and robbed them of their money and goods. On October 18, a joint task force was established at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.

The following is the testimony of a man living in Kamagaya City, Chiba Prefecture, who was robbed in the early morning of October 14, using the same method as in the series of robberies.

On October 15, there was also a fatality. When he was found, his mouth was covered with adhesive tape. He had been repeatedly beaten with a blunt instrument or other object, and had several broken bones, mainly in his upper body. The cause of death was exsanguination due to general bruising. The number of casualties in the series of incidents reached 18,” said a reporter from the political section of a national newspaper.

In addition to their methods, these robberies were committed by members of the so-called “Tokuryu,” an anonymous and mobile crime group connected through social networking services, who were recruited as part-timers to commit the robberies.

The suspect, 22-year-old Mayuki Takarada, who was arrested on October 19 on suspicion of murdering Goto, told the Kanagawa Prefectural Police that he applied for a part-time job on SNS because he was lured by the offer of “more than 150,000 yen per day. Shunki Endo, 22, who was arrested for robbery in Nerima Ward, also said that the black market job was the trigger for his arrest.

Speaking of “Yakibyte,” a series of wide-area robberies committed by an instructor who called himself “Luffy” and manipulated the perpetrators from 2010 to early 2011 are still fresh in our memory. However, there is a “definite difference” between this series of robberies and those committed by the Luffy Group. Mr. A, who worked as a recruiter for black market workers for the Luffy Group, revealed, “Both in the selection of targets and the crimes themselves, there is no difference in the way they choose their targets.

The Lufy group is very poor in selecting their targets and committing the crimes. The Rufi Group obtained a list of names created by mail-order companies, etc., from which they made further appointments to accurately grasp the asset status of their targets before committing robberies. The reason why the amount of damage is as small as several hundred thousand yen per case in spite of the large number of robberies like this one can only be attributed to the fact that the robberies were carried out at random without doing proper preliminary investigations. It would be impossible unless the people directing the robberies were in desperate need of money.”

Yukio Ishihara, a journalist and expert on “black market” robberies, agrees.

In the Yokohama case, adhesive tape and gloves were provided at a convenience store near the crime scene, and the perpetrators were caught on security cameras without hesitation. In other words, it was the work of an amateur.

Further “damage escalation” is also possible.

The Metropolitan Police Department is said to be investigating, believing that there is a common directing actor in the series of incidents. Mr. B, who was involved in the crimes at another Tokuru, warns, “The perpetrators are disposable, so this situation will continue.

The perpetrators are disposable, so this situation will continue until a large sum of money is obtained to the satisfaction of the instructor. The question is whether the high price of damage will come first or the arrest of the instructor will come first. When I was involved in this case, the instructor emphasized to the enforcer that he could do anything he wanted if he ran into a resident. The kids who apply for the black market job are indiscriminate, and they don’t know how much violence to use. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more serious damage.

A yakuza friend of mine also gathers amateurs for robberies, and he said that nowadays all the katagi are in need of money, so they can gather as many executioners as they want. There will be more random robberies in the future.”

More than 30 of the perpetrators have been arrested, but because they have no direct connection to the instructing officers, they have not been linked to the full extent of the crime. The “untraceable” barbaric acts repeated in the part-time sense of a tenuous connection are the worst of the worst – with no way to stop them.

From the November 15, 2024 issue of FRIDAY