Famous land swindles in Tokyo
Next month, Netflix is coming out with a fictional series based on 'jimenshi' (地面師), or real estate fraudsters, called Tokyo Swindlers. It looks to be based on some recent high-profile fraud cases that have seen some developers lose billions of Yen to scammers pretending to be selling sought-after plots of land. This is a real risk that we all have to be aware of when operating in Japan's real estate market. While the criminals tend to target domestic investors, I have seen some suspicious cases where foreigners may have also been targeted.Read more