The cops are meant to be the ones protecting us and taking down the bad guys, right?
Not always, it seems. Yesterday, Japanese media reported on a female police officer who has been arrested for impersonating a man in a “romance fraud” to get money.
The 25-year-old Yurina Otani is a cop in Osaka but moonlighted as a fraudster, it is alleged.
She apparently pretended to be a Canadian male doctor on social media and even an actual Japanese fashion model from July to August. Well, that certainly trumps a Nigerian prince.
By constructing stories about needing money for “patients in Yemen,” she tricked two women in their fifties and sixties out of ¥900,000 in cash. The women, who lived in Saga and Saitama respectively, transferred the money into Otani’s account.
The total confirmed losses of the two women are as high as ¥13.34 million, including the money they spent in addition to the cash they sent her.
Otani did not act alone but was part of a fraud group, which used multiple bank accounts.
The soon-to-be-former cop has admitted the charges.
Otani was an officer at Nishinari Police Station in Osaka, one of the roughest parts of the city. Acquaintances have told the media that she was a popular, positive, and sporty person with lots of male friends.
