Credit card scam targeting foreigners on the rise in Roppongi

TOKYO, Aug. 28 Kyodo -
Foreigners who visit restaurants and bars in Tokyo's Roppongi entertainment
district are increasingly becoming the targets of credit card fraud in which
they are charged for payments they did not make.
According to Azabu Police Station which oversees the district, it has received
more than 100 consultation requests from foreigners over such scams since last
year, mostly involving people from Europe and the United States.
The number of Chinese tourists visiting the area has been sharply on the rise
recently and they could also become targets of such fraud, the police said.
An Italian man in his 30s who lives in Tokyo said he filed a lawsuit against
two credit card firms and a restaurant in Roppongi he had never visited after
receiving account statements from the firms last fall notifying him that he
spent about 370,000 yen at the restaurant.
Fraud is widespread in Japan, a country that has a reputation of being
generally safe, he said.
According to the man, one possible lead to the fraud might be his visit to a
bar in Roppongi with a friend after they were solicited by a man who appeared
to be an African on a nearby street several weeks before he received the
account statements.
At the bar, he and his friend had several drinks and were asked to pay about
6,000 yen. When he handed a credit card to a foreign employee, it was returned
to him a few minutes later with the employee saying the card could not be used.
The man then submitted another card, but it was also returned for a similar
reason. He ended up going to an automated teller machine and paid the amount in
cash, he said.
The bar was located a few hundred meters from the restaurant's address written
on the account statements, but later disappeared, according to the Italian man.
In the lawsuit, a settlement was reached in July this year at the Tokyo
District Court with the two credit card companies and the restaurant agreeing
to the man's claim for compensation.
The restaurant operator expressed dissatisfaction, claiming the man probably
did not remember his visit to the restaurant because he was drunk. But a
spokesperson of a different credit card company said, ''It is technically
possible to move a credit card terminal.''
About 40 places in Roppongi have been cited as causing such problems, a police
source said.
''Foreign tourists who cannot consult about the damage they suffer because they
cannot speak Japanese fluently tend to become the targets,'' the source said.
==Kyodo