It’s no secret that Japan’s graying population and shrinking birthrate are major concerns, and everyone is being asked to pitch in and help out in their own way. From attractive public service billboards to special cash bonuses, businesses and government are all working to encourage the young people left in the country to get busy and make more young people.
What’s really weird is that there’s now an industry. Opportunities are to be found everywhere to be labeled as “marriage brokers”, or people who matchmake without the help of a weird website and weirder commercials. Obviously, if there’s a new industry, then there’s opportunity for crime. Fifteen men with ties to the yakuza have been arrested for running a series of marriage brokering scams and making off with as much as 1 billion yen from 200 victims. It’s hard out there for a yakuza.
Posing as “celebrity marriage brokers”, the gangsters would entice victims into signing up for their service with a “membership fee” of about 100,000 yen, and then setting up dates with accomplice “sakura” girls. Each date would cost a fee to set up along with various “deposits” and convenience charges. The client would then be strung along for more and more dates as his bride-to-be feigned growing affection. When the time was right, the gangsters and their girls would just disappear. One victim was taken for nearly 80 million yen. Their scams also went small-scale, targeting rural, lower-income marks for about 100,000 yen apiece. Victims in those cases were more likely to just write off the losses rather than shame themselves trying to get their money back.
Do the yen to dollar translation yourself. And no, we won’t make a joke about a shotgun wedding.