/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>Juna Yamada, joined SKE48, the Nagoya-based sister group of Japan’s top idol unit AKB48, in 2013, and she “graduated” from the group in 2019
>At some point in time, Yamada made the acquaintance of Hiromu Kurumadachi, the owner of a Nagoya consulting company called THE (each letter, T, H, and E, is pronounced separately). Together they formed a plan in which Yamada would register profiles on dating apps and lure in young, gullible men, not just through her looks and charms, but by also claiming to be an investment expert earning 10 million yen a year through her skillful prediction of currency exchange rate fluctuations and manipulation of binary options. Yamada would then meet up with the men, investigators say, and with coaching from Kurumadachi give them a sales pitch about her “investment logic that guarantees you’ll make a profit,” along with some perfunctory financial mumbo jumbo, then ask them to pay her for her advice.
>The arrests stem specifically from a Jan 31, 2020 incident when Yamada met with a man she’d met through a dating app at a hotel lounge in Nagoya and collected 500,000 yen from him for financial advice. In total, though, investigators believe that she and the 24-year-old Kurumadachi defrauded over 100 men Yamada made contact with out of a total of roughly 58 million yen.