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A rapidly growing number of people are connecting to overseas online casinos and becoming immersed in gambling. It must be made well known that this constitutes a crime in Japan, and regulations on the use of online casinos must be hastened.
The National Police Agency intends to conduct its first-ever investigation into the actual situation of companies operating online casinos and their users, how bets are settled and other matters. The aim is to regulate connections to the sites and take measures against gambling addiction.
Gambling is prohibited in Japan, with exceptions for publicly licensed gambling such as on horse and bicycle racing. Even if a site is legally operated overseas, connecting to the site from Japan and placing bets constitutes illegal gambling under the Penal Code.
Even so, the number of users is rapidly increasing, partly due to the widespread misconception that “since it is legally operated overseas, there is no problem with using it in Japan.”
According to a private digital analysis firm, the number of accesses from Japan to online casinos increased significantly — from 700,000 per month in 2018 to 83 million per month in 2021.
Online casinos include slot machines and roulette, as well as betting on the outcome of sporting events. Sites displaying information in Japanese are also conspicuous. Many people may have started using online casinos while refraining from going out due to the COVID-19 pandemic as if it were just a game.
There have been an increasing number of cases in which the illegal acts of users have been exposed by the police. People should be aware that the easy use of online casinos can lead to serious consequences.
Since online casinos can be used 24 hours a day, wherever there is a smartphone or personal computer, the risk of falling into addiction is said to be high. It is not uncommon for people to fall even deeper into addiction in an attempt to recoup their losses.
The dangers of gambling addiction should be obvious, even without mentioning the example of the illegal gambling of huge sums of money by a former interpreter for Major League Baseball player Shohei Ohtani. In another incident, the town government of Abu, Yamaguchi Prefecture, mistakenly transferred benefit payments to a person who then spent them on online casinos.
There are young people and others who incur large debts via online casinos, and in order to repay them, they apply for “dark part-time jobs” and become involved in special fraud and other crimes. The current situation in which people can freely access online casinos is serious and cannot be left unchecked.
Some other countries, such as those in Europe, have introduced blocking measures to prevent access to illegal online casinos. Japan should consider introducing such an approach as well.
Cracking down on remittance service providers that mediate the settlement of bets between overseas online casino site operators and users in Japan would also be effective. It is hoped that the relevant government ministries and agencies will work together to take measures not to allow remittances for illegal gambling.
