"Investment fraud" latest tricks, how to avoid becoming a victim? Interview with Kohei Morinaga | Now, a trending topic | Manekuri, investment information and useful media for money - Monex Securities

Celebrities claiming to be on SNS and deceiving people out of money under the guise of ‘investment’ is a growing trend of ‘SNS-type investment fraud’ since 2024. Economic analyst Mr. Kohei Morinaga has also had his own photos and name misused by fraud groups. After receiving reports from numerous victims, Mr. Morinaga attempted undercover reporting himself and continues to disseminate information and raise awareness about the reality of the damage through media and YouTube channels. This time, we asked him about the evolving methods of investment fraud, the actual situation of the damage, and the precautions to avoid falling victim to investment fraud.

●Profile●

CEO of Manene Co., Ltd., economic analyst. After engaging in research work at securities companies and asset management companies, he was involved in the launch of new businesses and the establishment of corporations in Asian countries, and served as a business manager and CEO. In 2018, he established Manene Co., Ltd., a financial education venture. Currently, he writes and lectures as an economic analyst and participates in the management of venture companies in Japan and overseas. He is the author of many books, including “Parent-Child Zeni Q&A” (Kadokawa Shinsho), co-authored with his father, Takuro Morinaga, and “Morinaga-sensei, please teach us the knowledge of money so that we can live strong and wisely!” (ALC).

Using AI to impersonate celebrities in SNS-based investment fraud

!

――It is a social issue, investment fraud through SNS, and Mr. Morinaga himself has been victimized, such as having his photo and name used without permission for “false advertising.” Please tell us about the modus operandi of “SNS-type investment fraud.”

Typical are fake advertisements with photos of celebrities such as “I will deliver stocks that go up every day” and “I will teach you how to invest absolutely profitable” that you can see on SNS such as Facebook, X, and Instagram. In many cases, ads come with a QR code, and if you are interested and inadvertently scan the QR code, you will be directed to a LINE group chat.

I actually experienced the flow of fraud from a fake advertisement on SNS with “Kohei Morinaga” as an advertising tower, but first I was invited to a group talk with hundreds of participants, including two people who claimed to be an impostor “Kohei Morinaga” and a woman who claimed to be an assistant. Of course, most of the participants in the chat are Sakura. When the fake and the assistant send, “Let’s buy this stock today!”, Hundreds of sakura say, “Thanks to the teacher, my assets have doubled!” Messages such as “The stock you recommended the other day has become a stop high” are posted one after another.

Until around 2023, if you doubted whether I was the real Yasuhira Morinaga and asked me “Are you really Yasuhira Morinaga?”, I would be forcibly expelled from the group. However, now I upload personal identification documents such as my driver’s license as evidence. Of course, they are forged, but they are very well made. Even I myself wonder why they have my driver’s license.

- It seems like we could believe it if we were shown a driver’s license in a LINE group chat.

Recently, it has evolved even further. When I persist, “Is this driver’s license a fake?”, they invite me to a video call, saying, “Will you believe me if we talk?” If I agree, “Fake Kouhei Morinaga” appears at the other end of the call and speaks to me in “my voice”.

It’s a so-called “deepfake” (fake video using generative AI) that extracts face and voice data from my video and processes it, but it uses something like a chatbot, so you can have a conversation in real time. Even if there is a slight delay in the response, even the time lag feels real because it is a LINE call. If it is so thorough, even those who were skeptical will believe it.

- AI is even being used for video calls… So, what kind of scams are there where they trick you into giving them money?

“Would you like to have individual conversations because you have potential?” You are invited to a one-on-one chat screen and offered to “manage your assets directly.” When you deposit into the dedicated account shown in the chat, fake settlement details and transaction reports are sent in images, and when you see them, it looks like you’re making a tremendous profit.

After making them feel like they want to invest more, they continue to deposit more and more, such as 10 million, 20 million… When the victim says, ‘I want to withdraw cash soon,’ they say things like ‘Since it’s an overseas account, it will cost 5 million yen for fees and taxes,’ and squeeze out more money. After that, they suddenly block you and become unresponsive… This pattern is very common. Anyway, they block you after withdrawing money to the limit, so the amount of damage tends to be large.

The belief that “I’m not being deceived”

**――I heard that many of the victims of “SNS-type investment scams” are in their 50s or older. **

According to the materials on special fraud victims published by the National Police Agency, the majority of the victims are middle-aged and elderly people. In the case of middle-aged and elderly people, they are often exposed to fraudulent advertisements via Facebook. Young people of the digital native generation are familiar with the internet and social media, and they don’t have much money to invest, so they don’t fall for this type of fraud much.

!

From around autumn 2023, I started receiving emails from people who had suffered sporadic damage, but the number of consultations increased rapidly after January 2024. The background behind this is, of course, the start of the new NISA. Everyone around me has started investing, but they don’t know what to buy even if it’s called stock investment. At such times, when they see an advertisement that financial and economic experts will pick up stocks for free, they instinctively jump on it.

From the beginning of the year, reports of damages started coming in almost every day, and in the spring, they started featuring fraud cases on terrestrial TV. I think you all remember the case where Takaaki Hori-san and Yusaku Maezawa, the founder of ZOZO, were in the spotlight for being victims of identity theft, where their photos and names were misused. From there, prominent economic commentators and investors have also become victims of impersonation, and the methods have become even more sophisticated. Despite being widely covered as a social issue in the news, why do people still easily fall victim to fraud?

There are hundreds of people who report to me that ‘Kohei Morinaga appeared in advertisements’ and some of them completely believe it and contact me saying ‘I will sue you if you don’t return the money!’. On the other hand, there are victims who say ‘I don’t want others to experience the same damage, so I will share the actual methods by interviewing Mr. Morinaga.’

When I asked the victim, “It was often in the news, but didn’t you know about it?” he replied, “Of course I did. I thought it was stupid to fall for such a suspicious story.”

So why do people get caught even though they have so much knowledge? Most of the people who have been scammed say, “I absolutely believed that the advertisement I saw was genuine.” Even the broken Japanese occasionally included in LINE exchanges would seem suspicious if you thought about it normally, but you might take it positively, thinking, “I wonder if the teacher was too busy and made a typo.” Believing that “I will be okay” and conveniently interpreting the information… that’s a typical “normalcy bias.”

**――If I am a victim, is there anything I can do about it? **

For some reason, everyone is the first to report the damage to me, so I tell them, “Let’s go to the nearest police station and file a damage report first.” In addition, it is a good idea to contact the Financial Services User Consultation Office of the Financial Services Agency. If you contact the financial institution of the account where you deposited the money immediately, they will freeze the account used for fraud. If there is any balance left, it may be distributed to the victim who applied for it under the “Remittance Fraud Relief Act”. However, the fraudulent group is also shrewd in that area, and as soon as the deposit is confirmed, the funds will be transferred, so it will be difficult to recover the money that was actually deceived.

“Do not transfer money to an account in the name of another person”, this is the last point that can be turned back

- The more confident someone is in saying, ‘I’m the only one who won’t be fooled,’ the more dangerous it is. What should we do to avoid falling victim to ‘SNS investment fraud’?

!

When you tap on an advertisement or access a QR code, it can almost be said that the scammers have already won. I think it is important to stay away from suspicious investment advertisements, which is where ‘financial literacy’ becomes crucial.

Scammers use two types of language, the first is “principal guarantee”. Many Japanese people do not want to suffer losses, so they easily fall for it, but it is a violation of the Investment Law for entities other than specific financial institutions to gather funds under the banner of “principal guarantee”. If you know this, you can easily see through investment advertisements that claim “principal guarantee” as fraud.

Another common thing is the presentation of returns that would be impossible if you think about it normally, such as “twice a year”. However, the scammers are also smart, so recently there is a pattern such as “I will operate at a monthly interest rate of 7%”. Even if you convert it to an annual interest rate, the return will be more than double in the end. If you have knowledge of arithmetic, you can calculate. In fact, this advertisement of “7% monthly interest rate” seems to “stick” to people who have only dabbled in investment a little more than those who have no investment experience at all.

When you see words like ‘principal guarantee’ or ‘absolutely profitable’, or if you are presented with excessively high returns, it is important to immediately recognize it as a fraudulent advertisement and ‘stay away’.

- Is there anything else I should be careful about, besides avoiding phrases like ‘principal guarantee’ and ‘double annual return’?

Also, once you are taken into the LINE group chat screen from SNS, it is extremely difficult to escape from there, but the last moment to stop is “depositing to the scammer’s account”.

The final destination of this scam is to ‘please transfer to this account’ or ‘please transfer via this app’. However, if you think calmly, it is impossible to transfer money to an individual’s account in the world of general asset management. If you are told to ‘transfer money to an account other than your own name’, it is 100% a scam, so please turn back there.

What to expect from investment fraud that comes in different forms and targets?

!

**――Did you start using your YouTube channel to undercover interviews and raise awareness of investment scams because there is no end to the number of victim consultations? **

Victims of investment scams don’t just lose money. When an elderly woman told me, “When I secretly invested the 100 million yen that my husband had been saving for retirement, I was deceived of everything,” I was speechless. Family relationships will fall apart, and your life plans after that will be messed up.

Ever since I started my financial education company, I’ve been raising awareness of scams, but no one wants to be scammed. Rather than saying, “Be careful,” I thought it would be more effective to show audio and video of the actual interaction with the scammer and warn them that “this is a scam.”

When I started publishing “scam scenes” on YouTube, I immediately received emails from several people. I was relieved when I saw the e-mail that said, “My elderly mother was communicating with a suspicious financier on LINE, and even if the children warned me, they wouldn’t listen to me, and after watching Mr. Morinaga’s video, they finally understood that it was a scam and managed to stop me.”

What do you think about the future of investment fraud? **

In the past year, there have been many scams related to stock investments against the backdrop of the start of the new NISA. However, it is expected that scams related to Bitcoin, commodities, real estate, and other such areas will become more prevalent in the future. Scammers are constantly changing their tactics to target your valuable assets. I hope that people who invest always keep in mind that ‘too good to be true’ investment opportunities are scams and not to think that they are the exception.

※ This interview was conducted on November 28, 2024.

※This content is based on personal experience and does not reflect our company’s opinion.

※Please make the final decision regarding investment at your own discretion and responsibility.

Photo: Toshiharu Takei