Your Electric Bill Will Go Down on Its Own—But What If You’re Told “You Need to Take Action”? The Current State of Scam Emails Pretending to Be from Government Agencies
Simply clicking the button opens a genuine PayPay screen,
“Beware of Scam Emails Regarding Electricity and Gas Bill Assistance”
On June 25, ’26, the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy issued this warning on its own website.
This was in response to reports that people had received emails impersonating the Agency, claiming that online procedures were required to receive electricity and gas bill assistance.
The emails that were actually confirmed claimed that there was an unclaimed subsidy and stated that
and pressured recipients with messages such as, “If you do not complete the procedure by the deadline, your eligibility will expire,”
and similar statements; the links led to fake websites unrelated to the Agency.
The goal is to trick recipients into entering their personal information. The Agency stated, “We have never sent such emails,” and made it clear that “under this support program, we do not require users to complete any application procedures, provide personal information, or pay any fees.”
This is not limited to electricity and gas bill assistance. Scams impersonating government agencies—including the National Tax Agency and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, as well as those demanding payment of National Health Insurance premiums or resident tax—continue unabated.This is because the mere mention of a government agency’s name lowers people’s guard. These scams have “evolved” significantly beyond the typical scenario many people imagine—being lured to a fake website and tricked into entering a credit card number. In fact, there have been numerous cases where simply clicking a button opens a genuine PayPay transfer screen, or where two-factor authentication is bypassed even when enabled.
The “Anti-Phishing Council” has been tracking these schemes.
The council, comprising nearly 150 member organizations—including banks, credit card companies, and security firms—collects and analyzes reports from the public regarding fake emails and websites, and issues public warnings. Michiaki Yoshioka, the council’s secretary-general, explains:
“Scams posing as government agencies follow a clear ‘pattern.’ One factor is timing.Phishing emails and SMS (Short Message Service) messages arrive at times that coincide with topics of public interest—such as tax collection periods, year-end tax adjustments, or the My Number Points program—that the general public hears about in the news. In many cases, the wording is crafted to make the recipient think, to some extent, that it might pertain to them.”
The second ‘pattern’ is to disguise the message as a topic of interest to get the recipient to read it first, and then pile on the pressure. In other words, they don’t give the recipient time to think. If the email purports to be from the National Tax Agency, it might issue a warning like, “Your property will be seized if you do not pay by the deadline”; if it claims to be from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, it might say, “There has been suspicious access to your My Number Portal.”
It’s easy to impersonate a government agency’s domain
When you see words like “seizure” or “expiration” in a message you assume is an official government notice, your urge to stay calm and verify the information tends to take a back seat.Moreover, if the sender’s name displayed on your computer or smartphone screen is “National Tax Agency” or the official “.go.jp” domain (Editor’s note: An official domain available for registration by Japanese government agencies, independent administrative agencies, and special-purpose corporations), you’ll find even fewer reasons to be suspicious. However, Mr. Yoshioka points out the following:
“You can’t rely on that display. It’s possible to impersonate a government agency’s domain.The ‘.go.jp’ displayed on the screen is nothing more than a sign that can be replaced later. What’s more, the information needed to verify the message may not even be displayed on the screen. Especially on smartphones, the information displayed is more limited compared to computers. If the text is reasonably well-written and the content seems relevant to you, I think many people will instinctively click on the link.”
So what happens when you click on such a link? Here’s an example of a scam impersonating the Japan Pension Service:
When you click the button attached to an email titled “Your pension premiums are overdue, ” the PayPay app launches on your smartphone screen. The screen displays a money transfer screen, with both the recipient and the amount already pre-filled. All you have to do is press “Send.”
“PayPay has a money transfer feature. When you click the link in the email, PayPay launches and takes you directly to the transfer screen. The amount is set by the criminals, so if you send the money without thinking, funds will be transferred from your PayPay account to the criminals,” said Mr. Yoshioka.
Rather than displaying a fake website in a browser, the genuine app actually launches. Moreover, the victim believes they are in the middle of processing a payment to the Pension Agency. Because these two factors overlap, victims end up sending money to the criminals without ever suspecting anything. In some months, the Anti-Phishing Council received as many as 7,000 reports of victims falling for this scheme alone.
PayPay is currently implementing countermeasures, such as preventing the creation of payment links for accounts that have not completed identity verification. Even so, it’s important to be aware that once you fall into the criminals’ trap, you can be tricked into sending money this easily.
In the second half of this series, we’ll look at scams that display screens that look exactly like government agency websites before luring users to the login pages of banks or credit card companies. What happens if you enter your ID and password on such a fake site…?
