Don't be tricked!

At all times, the crimes from pickpockets to murders do exist.
But what is new and impressive to my ear is "pay-into-fraud".

There are so many variations of this trick, but the basic style is so simple:
Criminal calls victim, pretends to be a police, and tells that his/her son/daughter made an accident and needs to compensate, so please pay $$$ into particular bank account.

I can't believe that there are thousands of Japanese who where tricked in this single phone call!
It's so clear that this kind of phone call is strange. If they are really police, they should confirm the name of the parents first, and the one who asks for compensation is not police but the other party of the accident.
And yet, they believe in what the criminal says, since they are panicked.

The variations of modus operandi I mentioned above is about making the story not suspicious.
Criminals are clever, they change the story everytime it becomes well known.
The bad news is that there's no limit of variation of the story.

However, this kind of crime is also easily prevented.
Perhaps the victims can call his/her son/daughter, and check if they are really in trouble.
Isn't it simple?
(Well, if the criminals are so clever, they'd call when the victims can't get a contact with his/her son/daughter.)

I guess this kind of crime cannot be done in other countries.
One of the tradition of Japan which we can be "proud" of is "to trust, and to be trusted", which criminals abuse.

It's really famous in the world that Japanese are suckers,
they are easily tricked and have a lot of money.

It's also because of the environment, that provides us extra-protection, which makes us not immune to the dangers.

That's why we can never drive away all crimes,
When we conquer one crime, another crime will appear.

And since we can never be sure that we'll never be the victim,
We should be aware and cautious.