Japan Police Aim to Quickly Expose Ringleader as Robberies Become More Violent; Recent Cases Resemble 2022, 2023 Robberies

By Tatsuhiro Ishizawa and Yohei Kano / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers

16:22 JST, October 19, 2024

The recent robberies that have been occurring in the Tokyo metropolitan area have become increasingly violent and have involved murder-robbery, abduction and other serious acts. The incidents, many of which were carried out by individuals recruited for so-called dark part-time jobs, have been spreading and stoking up social anxiety.

The police have set up a joint investigation headquarters, which includes the Metropolitan Police Department and the Saitama, Chiba, and Kanagawa prefectural police, to identify the person or group giving instructions to the criminals while strengthening measures to deter crime.

“With all the strength of the Japanese police force, we will wipe out the ringleader and mastermind,” Kazuhito Shinka, the head of the MPD’s Criminal Investigation Bureau, said at a meeting held following the establishment of the joint investigation headquarters, at MPD headquarters in Tokyo on Friday.

Since August, at least 19 similar incidents have been reported in six prefectures, including Hokkaido and Tochigi.

In the earlier robberies, the perpetrators, armed with a knife, searched a shop for goods or valuables. Later, the perpetrators became more violent as they broke into homes, tied up the residents and even struck them with blunt objects. A murder-robbery incident occurred on Tuesday in Aoba Ward, Yokohama.

A senior investigative source believes the ringleader or mastermind intensified their instructions to those who carried out the robberies to gain more money quickly, as they were unable to do so earlier.

The pattern of the robberies, with multiple perpetrators breaking in a house, appears to be similar to a series of eight robberies that occurred in 2022 and 2023 in Japan. Those robberies were orchestrated by ringleaders who went by “Luffy” and other names.

The ringleaders had created lists of people who kept large amounts of money at their homes and had perpetrators break into their homes in urban areas disguised as delivery workers.

In each of the 2022 and 2023 robberies, tens of millions of yen worth of money and valuables were stolen from the residents.

However, in most of the recent cases, homes in suburban areas have been targeted, with damage ranging from tens of thousands to several million yen. Homes that did not have large amounts of cash were also targeted.

“It’s likely that they picked their targets based on information on certain lists, such as a record of which houses were being remodeled,” said a senior police official. “Many people are scared, as they don’t know who will be involved in a similar incident next.”

Criminal group ‘tokuryu’

The suspects who have been arrested so far have never met each other and applied for the jobs on the social media platform X. The suspects became involved in the robberies as the job postings were listed as non-criminal job called “white jobs” and promised high rewards.

The police suspect the involvement of “tokuryu,” or anonymous and fluid criminal groups in which members contacted via social media repeatedly come together to commit crimes and then disperse.

Tokuryu gains money through various means, not only through robberies, but through special fraud, malicious remodeling of houses and illegal sex establishments.

However, they are not organized like a yakuza gang, and only those recruited to carry out the crimes would be exposed.

It is also suspected that those who give the instructions are based overseas and receive the money through various means.

The joint headquarters plans to work quickly to identify the ringleader or mastermind and might utilize investigators knowledgeable about special fraud and organized crime.