Investing in Japanese real estate is fraught with traps! Osaka has once again seen a surge of organized crimes involving "land swindlers."

Osaka will host the 2025 World Expo, attracting global attention. Due to the relatively expensive housing prices in Osaka compared to the saturated market in Tokyo, along with the recent booming tourism industry, it has become a top choice for many Chinese immigrants considering retirement. However, because of the significant profit margins, investors want to invest but face barriers due to a lack of language and legal knowledge, allowing fraud groups to take advantage. Osaka has become a new stage for real estate fraud groups. Hong Kong's well-known YouTuber, Mr. Atom from Atomic Files, revealed a transnational land fraud case targeting Hong Kong residents. Almost simultaneously, NHK and several Japanese media outlets disclosed the recent shocking "Osaka Real Estate Fraud" incident, where a fraud group impersonating landlords successfully swindled over 1.4 billion yen, with victims including well-known companies from both Japan and China.

Although the two fraud cases are not directly related, they share a common point of using "Osaka Real Estate Investment" as a pretext, and among the victims, there are Chinese individuals, who only realize they have been deceived after investing a large amount of money. The following is a comprehensive report.

Atomic file revelation: Hong Kong people mistakenly believe in the "Osaka Dream Project," wasting their retirement funds.

Hong Kong Youtuber Mr. Atom received reports from several victims who attended a real estate investment presentation, intending to invest in Osaka real estate for retirement. After putting in their retirement funds, they discovered they had been "duped," as the Japanese construction project had long been halted, the developers changed hands, and the group of ground manipulators included both Chinese and Japanese individuals. According to Mr. Atom, some of these Chinese individuals even changed their names to pose as Japanese, continuing to hold real estate presentations in Hong Kong to deceive new investors, completely disregarding the judicial system. These victims lament that when they sought legal action in Japan, they were not taken seriously by the Japanese police and found no help, resorting to seeking assistance through social media.

Mr. Atom recently released a video revealing that several victims from Hong Kong participated in a real estate investment presentation and were misled by the dream blueprint of a "Japanese retirement paradise," investing millions of Hong Kong dollars of their retirement savings into a real estate project in Osaka. The victims initially believed they were purchasing investment properties that were about to be completed, only to find out that the construction had already been halted, the responsible developer had changed its company name, the person in charge was unreachable, and there were complicated issues such as contracts being unfulfilled and unclear land ownership.

Even more shocking is that this Osaka real estate investment fraud case is suspected to be operated by a multinational scam group, involving members from China, Hong Kong, and Japan. They hold presentations in luxurious five-star hotels, specifically targeting Chinese-speaking individuals who wish to invest in Japanese real estate, and they continue to deceive people to this day.

Multiple victims went to Japan seeking legal assistance, but due to issues such as language barriers, legal understanding, and cross-border judicial processes, they found themselves without help. Even after hiring a lawyer, it is said that the Japanese police are relatively passive in handling reports from non-residents, leaving them almost without recourse and having to resort to self-media.

Japanese media reveals ground master techniques: impersonating landlords, altering company registrations, defrauding 1.45 billion yen.

Recently, Japanese media have extensively reported on a fraud case involving "ground engineers" that bears a striking resemblance to a Netflix storyline. This case is led by Japanese individuals and shares many commonalities with the cases revealed by Mr. Atom. The criminals exploit the victims' human weakness of wanting to invest in Osaka real estate, which is perceived as a land of gold and relatively cheap, ultimately deceiving many victims out of their money.

The main suspects in the Osaka ground master incident are Yuya Fukuda and Ryohei Kurumi. They impersonated the actual owners of three plots of land in Osaka's Minami district and a land ownership company. A female member of the fraud group, in her sixties, pretended to be the president who owned the land, using a forged driver's license (Note: Japan, like the United States, does not have personal identification cards, only driver's licenses serve as proof of identity )). They submitted the relevant documents to the local government office, successfully deceiving the civil servants and changing the land registration ownership. The fraud group then signed a sales contract with two companies seeking to acquire the real estate, swindling 1.45 billion yen. Just like in the Netflix drama "Ground Master," the deceived real estate developers thought they had scored a bargain, only to find it was all a sham.

How was the Osaka Ground Master incident exposed?

According to reports, the management personnel of the area said they saw someone trying to open the door of a property but found that the main door key had been changed. They contacted the property owner, who was surprised and stated that he had never sold the house. The management personnel claimed that several individuals thought they had bought that house, but in reality, they had only purchased "loneliness." The real owner suggested that the police be called quickly to handle the situation, which led to the exposure of the entire incident.

The president of the company that owns the property revealed in an interview that he noticed some anomalies as early as February last year. At that time, the president commissioned a judicial officer ( similar to a notary public in Taiwan ) to check the company's registration for another matter, and found that the "representative director" column had been changed to a person named "Kuzu" without his knowledge.

Japan's public sector mistakenly trusted a ground engineer who forged documents, leading to the original owner being furious and filing a lawsuit.

The most outrageous thing is that land agents can "confuse the fake with the real" and use forged documents to deceive public officials, even the Japanese district offices and the Ministry of Justice were deceived. The commissioned judicial officer rushed to the district office and the Ministry of Justice, requesting to see the land registration application documents, but they refused to show them on the grounds that the documents contained personal information and did not accept them. When the president of the property received inquiries from several real estate companies about his property, he realized that this was a case of "land fraud."

The president said that even after explaining to departments such as the legal affairs bureau that the registration was fake, they still did not believe him, claiming that the submitted documents were real. As a result, he ended up spending a lot of time and money fighting a civil lawsuit, and his anger had no outlet.

How did the suspect impersonate the owner?

NHK's investigation revealed the specific methods used by the ground master. According to investigators and civil trial documents, the suspect first forged a loan note, claiming that the female president of the company that owned the property borrowed money from them. They presented the loan note to the district government, impersonating the creditor to obtain a copy of the president's resident registration card.

According to the Japanese Basic Resident Registration Act, local governments may issue duplicate resident registration cards and other documents of debtors for the purpose of debt collection when deemed appropriate. The Japanese police have stated to the media that this system has been abused.

The scam group illegally obtained personal information from the resident registration card of the chairman. One female member of the scam group successfully impersonated the owner using a forged driver's license.

Real estate investment in Osaka becomes bait, with information gap and lack of legal knowledge as key factors.

Although the backgrounds of the two cases and the members involved in the crimes are different—one involves the Chinese community being defrauded by a transnational group, while the other is operated by a domestic fraud group in Japan—the logic of the scams is surprisingly consistent. They use real estate in Osaka as bait to carry out the fraud, exploiting existing loopholes in Japan's land administration and legal system, impersonating landlords and builders, and providing fake documents that make it difficult for investors to verify. While the mastermind of the Osaka ground rent case is Japanese, reports from multiple Japanese media outlets indicate that most of the victims are Chinese.

The author believes that the saying "Don’t Trust, Verify" is always useful. When you hear about an investment opportunity that is "Too Good To Be True," do not be deceived by the deceptive language of scams. There is no free lunch in this world, so protect your own wealth and assets.

This article highlights the numerous traps in investing in Japanese real estate! Osaka has once again seen multiple cases of organized crime by "ground masters," first reported by Chain News ABMedia.