Japan Fraud Statistics 2025: The 65+ Share Fell to 51.3% — but Their Case Count Rose

I started worrying about an older family member and did not know what to look at first. In August 2026 I read three public Japanese sources: the National Police Agency's fraud statistics, the National Consumer Affairs Center's consultation data, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs' survey of internet use.

I expected all three to show the same shape — risk rising steadily with age. None of them did. That is not the same as saying older people are fine. None of these sources divides victims by the population of their age group, so none of them can tell you how exposed one age group is compared with another.

The three sources answer three different questions

Before any of the numbers, it is worth being explicit about what each source can answer. All three touch on older people and online risk, but they count different things over different denominators, so they cannot simply be placed side by side.

Each is the latest of its kind, but the periods do not line up: the statistics that break out the 65-and-over group are annual and published on different schedules. They cannot be read as describing the same year.

51.3% is a share, and it did not fall because older victims became fewer

Japan's National Police Agency publishes annual figures on tokushu sagi, its term for remote impersonation fraud: someone calls or messages a victim, gains their trust without ever meeting them, and has money transferred or handed over. The confirmed figures for 2025 (PDF, external site; published 22 May 2026) cover January to December 2025.

The share went down while the count went up. That is not a contradiction. 51.3% is the proportion of recognized cases (excluding corporate victims) whose victim was 65 or over, so it moves with everything else in the denominator.

And the denominator is what moved. Recognized cases came to 27,832 in 2025, up 6,789 (+32.3%), and losses reached ¥142.31bn, close to double the previous year (+98.0%). The total grew faster than the 65-and-over count, so the share fell.

The report explains the drop as well. A method the agency began counting separately in 2025 — fraud in which the caller impersonates a police officer and claims to be conducting an investigation — spread to younger victims. People in their twenties and thirties made up 27.9% of relative-impersonation cases (up 14.4 points) and 30.0% of fictitious-billing cases. The agency names this as the main reason the 65-and-over share of total cases fell.

Police-impersonation fraud alone accounted for 11,014 cases and ¥100.50bn in losses.

Depending on the method, the 65+ share runs from 20.9% to 98.9%

Inside a single category, the range runs from 20.9% to 98.9%. For deposit fraud and cash-card theft by deception, about 99% of recognized cases excluding corporate victims involve someone 65 or over. Fictitious billing is 33.2% — one case in three.

The count and the money also sit in different places. For police-impersonation fraud the largest number of cases was among people in their thirties (2,239), followed by their twenties (1,718). The largest losses were among people in their seventies (¥27.46bn) and sixties (¥25.63bn). Younger victims show up in the case count; older victims show up in the amount.

Consultations hit a record, but 38.6% does not mean what it looks like

The National Consumer Affairs Center reports 304,130 consumer consultations (PDF, external site; published 3 September 2025) in fiscal 2024 where the contracting party was 65 or over. That is 38.6% of all consultations — the highest share since fiscal 2020.

The amounts ran opposite to what I assumed. The average contracted purchase was about ¥900,000 for those under 65 and about ¥710,000 for those 65 and over — lower for the older group. The average amount already paid was about ¥450,000 and ¥460,000 respectively, effectively the same. For the 65-and-over group, more than 60% of contracted purchases were under ¥50,000.

People in their seventies are online — mostly for email

The Ministry of Internal Affairs' 2025 communications usage survey (PDF, external site; published 29 May 2026, surveyed end of August 2025) puts individual internet use at 92.0% of men and 90.4% of women aged 60–69, 77.0% and 67.5% for 70–79, and 45.3% and 32.3% for 80 and over.

Across all internet users, 48.2% reported buying goods or services online. But in the age breakdown of the top five uses, email comes first in every bracket from 50 upward, and shopping does not appear in the top five at all from 60 upward.

That was the part I had wrong. People do not drop off the internet as they age. They stay on it, and the centre of gravity of what they do there moves.

The next set of numbers will not line up with this one

If you plan to reuse these figures, at least three things will not carry over cleanly.

• The method categories change. From the 2026 figures onward — the next set the agency will publish — police-impersonation fraud becomes a category of its own, and social-media investment and romance fraud fold into the impersonation-fraud total. The per-method shares will not be directly comparable with this year's.
• The same fiscal year gives different counts at different cut-off dates. PIO-NET registrations accumulate afterwards, so consultations for fiscal 2023 involving people 65 and over come to 277,604 in the source used here (registrations to 31 July 2025) and 276,988 in another (registrations to 31 May 2025). Take the cut-off with the number.
• Fiscal 2024 is the latest year broken out at 65 and over. Fiscal 2025 consultations (1.006 million) are already published, but that report's age bands start at 70 and over.

What the data supports, and what it does not

Everything above is what the sources say. What follows is my own reading of it, not something stated in the reports.

Counts and amounts describe the situation better than shares do. A share moves when something changes in another age group, even if nothing changed in yours. That is exactly what happened here.

"Restrict everything, because they are older" does not fit these numbers. Some methods target people 65 and over almost exclusively — about 99% of cases for deposit fraud and cash-card theft. Others, like fictitious billing at 33.2%, are spread across every age. Looking at which methods are involved fits this data better than drawing a line at an age.

That said, none of these three sources can tell you which age group is most at risk. That would need victims divided by the population of each age group, and no figure of that kind appears in any of them. Comparing risk across ages requires a different statistic than these.

Sources

• National Police Agency, "Recognition and clearance of impersonation fraud and social-media investment/romance fraud in 2025 (confirmed figures)" — Publisher: National Police Agency, Organized Crime Department and Community Safety Planning Division. Period: January–December 2025 (confirmed). Published: 22 May 2026. PDF, external site — figures quoted from p.5.
• National Consumer Affairs Center, "Consumer consultations involving people aged 65 and over, fiscal 2024" — Publisher: National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan. Period: fiscal 2024 (PIO-NET registrations to 31 July 2025). Published: 3 September 2025. PDF, external site
• Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, "2025 Communications Usage Trend Survey, report (household edition)" — Publisher: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Surveyed: end of August 2025. Published: 29 May 2026. PDF, external site

All three PDFs were retrieved on 28 August 2026 and every figure in this article was checked against them one by one. The next check is due 30 September 2026, when the Consumer Affairs Center's 65-and-over report for the following year is expected and Table 3 gains a row.