A few weeks ago, a Nepali clerk stopped an older Japanese woman from falling victim to a scam that’s been around in one form or another since the early 2000s. It’s a feel-good story about a quick-thinking clerk for sure, but it’s surrounded by a political narrative trying to frame foreigners as the bad guys.
Stopping a scam in progress
To set the scene, picture first a small convenience store in Kobe. On May 19, 2026, a 24-year-old clerk from Nepal, Saru Durga, noticed something off when an elderly woman asked how to buy electronic-money cards. It’s the kind of question combini staff hear all the time.
However, when she asked a few follow-up questions, the story unraveled fast: she believed she was about to receive ¥1 billion. She just had to pay a little bit of money first. If you’ve heard of the “Nigerian Prince” scam, it’s basically that but with different dressing.
Durga didn’t hesitate. She alerted the store owner, who called the police. The scam was stopped before any money changed hands.
On June 1, Hyogo Prefectural Police awarded Durga a letter of appreciation. Her response was simple: she was just glad that studying Japanese and working hard to come to Japan had allowed her to help someone.
Japan’s fraud problem
Scams preying on the elderly, or really scams in general, are nothing new. But right now, something called special fraud (特殊詐欺, tokushu sagi) has skyrocketed. This refers to scams where someone tries to gain the trust of another through phone, social media, or email to trick their victim into sending money.
Note that this is a relatively recent definition; before 2026, special fraud only included cases where the scammer pretended to be an official to put pressure on victims. (Something to keep in mind when you’re looking up statistics!)
However, even with the old definition, the numbers are bad. The National Police Agency reported ¥71.9 billion (USD $449 million) in special fraud losses in 2024. Things didn’t improve in 2025, when losses in the first six months hit ¥59.7 billion (USD $373 million), nearly triple the pace of the year before.
The most popular scam of early 2025 had criminals impersonating police officers, demanding money to “prove innocence.” These cases alone made up over 65% of losses, averaging more than ¥8 million (USD $50,000) per victim.
Add in social media-based “investments” and romance scams, and 2025’s total hits a staggering ¥325.7 billion (USD $2 billion), with 43,000 cases reported nationwide.
Behind much of the fraud are domestic groups nicknamed “tokuryu” (the full name being 匿名・流動型犯罪グループ, tokumei ryūdō-gata hanzai gurūpu). These loosely organized crime networks recruit through shady online gig ads known as yami baito (闇バイト). In other words, this is largely a homegrown system.
Politicians blame foreigners, but stats don’t agree
Now put that next to another headline number: Japan’s foreign population.
By the end of 2024, the country had nearly 3.77 million foreign residents, rising to around 3.96 million by mid-2025. Foreign workers alone number about 2.3 million, growing faster than government projections.
That growth has become political fuel. In the July 2025 upper-house election, the right-wing Sanseito party gained traction with claims linking foreigners to rising crime. Statements about foreigners forming groups to commit theft and worse circulated widely.
You can’t blame it all on online right-wingers, though. Even some official rhetoric has leaned toward “firm responses” to rule-breaking foreigners, framed in a way critics say risks reinforcing suspicion rather than easing it. Tribalism is an easy beast to feed, and it’s one that has caused harm to people who have done nothing wrong.
But the data doesn’t support that narrative. The National Police Agency itself has said it’s difficult to argue that a larger foreign population directly worsens public safety. While foreign arrests did increase in 2024, they rose far more slowly than the foreign population itself.
If you adjust for age and gender, the crime rate among foreigners may at first appear to be slightly higher than that of citizens. However, after removing immigration violations, the foreigner crime rate comes out to around the same as the citizen crime rate.
There have been big news stories about scam centers based overseas or theft rings run by foreigners, and these grab people’s attention and fuel narratives of “foreigner bad.” However, the fraud wave causing the biggest financial damage is largely driven by domestic networks.
Reframing the debate to see foreigners as people
That brings things back to the convenience store counter.
Convenience stores are one of the main choke points for these scams. Victims are often instructed to buy prepaid cards or e-money and relay the codes. Stores train clerks to spot suspicious behavior like large purchases, nervous customers, or vague explanations, and to intervene. In many stores, especially in cities, those clerks are foreign students or workers.
Durga’s case is not unusual. There have been multiple commendations in recent years for foreign clerks stopping similar scams, including other cases in Kobe. They are, quite literally, part of the frontline defense, even as some political narratives frame them as a risk.
Durga’s actions weren’t political. She saw a problem, understood the warning signs, and acted. That’s what most any decent person would do, regardless of whether they’re a foreign resident or native born. At the end of the day, people are people.
Public safety isn’t just about who commits crime. It’s also about who prevents it, and where. Sometimes, that’s someone who came from far away and paid close enough attention to stop a crime before it started.
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Sources
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