Arrested in Japan for Picking Up a Bank Card: What Foreign Nationals Must Know When a Minor Charge Hides a Fraud Investigation

Many foreign nationals now in Japanese police custody believe they did almost nothing. A friend asked them to collect an envelope. A high-paying job advertised on an app told them to hold a card and withdraw cash at an ATM. They were then arrested, often on a charge that looks trivial, such as failing to carry a residence card. What the investigators are actually building, in a large number of these cases, is a fraud or theft prosecution. This article is written for non-Japanese-speaking people caught in that situation and for their families, and it sets out what happens in the first few days and what should be done, on the basis of the statutes and the case law as they stand.

Key points of this article

• A person who collects a bank card or cash (known in Japanese as an uke-ko, the receiver) or withdraws money at an ATM (a dashi-ko) is charged as a co-principal in fraud under Article 246(1) of the Penal Code, punishable by imprisonment of up to 10 years, even if that person never keeps the money.
• Where the offender poses as a police officer or a bank employee, has an elderly victim place a card in an envelope, and swaps that envelope for a decoy, the offence is not fraud but theft under Article 235 of the Penal Code.
• The defence that the accused did not know it was a fraud is, under the framework set by the Supreme Court judgments of 11 December 2018 and 14 December 2018, usually defeated: intent is inferred from how obviously abnormal the circumstances known to the accused were.
• Liability arises even where the person was caught before receiving anything, and the reduction of sentence for an attempt is discretionary only (Article 43, main text). According to the Ministry of Justice, more than half of these actors receive a sentence of imprisonment without suspension.
• Once a final sentence of imprisonment exceeding 1 year without suspension is imposed, the person falls within the ground for deportation in Article 24(4)(ri) of the Immigration Control Act, and the entire basis of life in Japan is lost. That is precisely why defence work aimed at a decision not to prosecute, before any indictment, is decisive.

I only failed to carry my residence card, so why was I arrested

Carrying the residence card is an obligation under Article 23(2) of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act, and a breach is punishable by a fine of up to 200,000 yen (Article 75-3). Failure to carry a passport carries a fine of up to 100,000 yen (Articles 23(1) and 76(i)). A person under 16 years of age has no obligation to carry these documents (Article 23(5)). None of these offences carries imprisonment; in the hierarchy of Japanese criminal law they sit at the bottom.

Arrest and detention are nonetheless lawful. The proviso to Article 199(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure restricts arrest for offences punishable only by a small fine, but for offences under statutes other than the Penal Code, such as the Immigration Control Act, the threshold has been set for the time being at 20,000 yen. An offence punishable by a fine of up to 200,000 yen therefore falls outside that restriction, and arrest and detention proceed in the ordinary way.

The real issue is what happens during the interrogations conducted while the person is held. When the trigger for the street questioning was ATM security-camera footage, or a witness report near the home of an elderly victim, the police have had fraud or theft in view from the outset. Securing the person on a minor charge, using the detention period to consolidate the principal case, and then re-arresting on fraud as the period expires is a familiar sequence in investigations of the operational members of organised special fraud. A light offence on the arrest warrant does not mean a light case.

Am I still guilty if I only collected the parcel or only withdrew the cash

Yes. Fraud is an offence that the law treats as a single course of conduct: the deception, the mistaken belief it induces, the handing over of property, and the transfer of value. A person who takes on one role within that course of conduct bears responsibility for the whole of it as a co-principal under Article 60 of the Penal Code. The person who made the telephone call, the person who took the envelope at the front door, and the person who withdrew the cash at the ATM are, in law, equally principals. If the reward was a few tens of thousands of yen and the loss to the victim was several million yen, the person is treated as a principal in a fraud of several million yen.

The method used changes the offence. Where the victim is lied to and hands the card over personally, the offence is fraud. Where the offender poses as a police officer or a bank employee, instructs the victim to seal the card in an envelope for safekeeping, and swaps that envelope for one containing a dummy card while the victim steps away to fetch a personal seal, there is no delivery based on the will of the victim, and the offence is theft, punishable by imprisonment of up to 10 years or a fine of up to 500,000 yen.

The National Police Agency statistics are worth stating plainly. Of the 2,274 persons cleared for special fraud offences in 2024, 1,651, or 72.6 percent, were receivers, ATM withdrawers and their lookouts. It is the person at the end of the chain who is arrested. In the same year, 130 of those cleared were foreign nationals: 39 Chinese nationals and 32 Vietnamese nationals.

Will the explanation that I did not know it was a fraud be accepted

This is the point that is most widely misunderstood. Proof of intent does not require the accused to say that he or she knew. It is inferred from the situation in which the accused was placed.

In its judgment of 11 December 2018 (Keishu vol. 72, no. 6, p. 672), the Supreme Court considered a case in which the accused had repeatedly, for a reward of 10,000 yen, impersonated another person, received courier parcels at a vacant apartment, and left them in a station lavatory. The Court held that, irrespective of whether the method used was widely known through news reports, it could be inferred from the facts of which the accused was aware that he had recognised the possibility that the conduct amounted to fraud. The accused claimed he had thought the parcels contained a firearm or drugs, but he had never checked the contents, and there was nothing to suggest that his awareness of the possibility of fraud had been dispelled. The judgment of 14 December 2018 (same volume and number, p. 737) applied the same framework.

Using a false identity to receive a parcel; operating an ATM with a card in another person’s name; receiving instructions only through a messaging application that deletes them; a reward grossly out of proportion to the effort involved. If even one of these circumstances is recorded in a written statement, the assertion of ignorance becomes extremely difficult to sustain. What is said, and how it is said, in the earliest interrogations governs the finding on intent.

It ended as an attempt, so will the outcome be light

Not necessarily. An attempted fraud is punishable under Article 250 of the Penal Code, and the reduction of sentence for an attempt is expressed as something the court may do, not something it must do (Article 43, main text).

Commencement of the offence is also found at an earlier stage than most people expect. In its decision of 14 February 2022 (Keishu vol. 76, no. 2, p. 101), the Supreme Court dealt with a case in which the caller had already told the victim the lies, and the member assigned to swap the envelope abandoned the plan roughly 140 metres from the victim’s home on noticing a police officer. The Court held that, taking together the fact that the lies had created a situation in which the victim would comply and the fact that the offender had reached the vicinity of the victim’s home, the danger to the victim’s possession of the property was clear, and it upheld a conviction for attempted theft. An attempt is complete even where the card was never touched.

The same applies where a person joins the operation after the police, with the cooperation of the victim, have set up what is known in Japan as the deceived-victim ruse, waiting for the collector to arrive. In its decision of 11 December 2017 (Keishu vol. 71, no. 10, p. 535), the Supreme Court held a person liable as a co-principal in attempted fraud where that person took part in receiving the parcel without knowing that the lies had already been detected.

Then there is sentencing. According to the Ministry of Justice survey of finalised case records, the proportion of the operational participants in special fraud, the receivers and ATM withdrawers, who were sentenced to imprisonment without any suspension is 54.9 percent. Full suspension of the sentence is available where the term imposed is 3 years or less (Article 25(1) of the Penal Code), but participation in organised crime, the scale of the loss, and the practical difficulty of compensating the victims combine so that a substantial number of first offenders still receive immediate imprisonment. It is dangerous to assume that being a first-time participant, or being caught at the attempt stage, will by itself allow a person to remain in Japan.

What happens to my residence status if I am convicted

Article 24(4)(ri) of the Immigration Control Act provides that a person sentenced to imprisonment for life, or to imprisonment exceeding 1 year, is subject to deportation. A case in which the whole of the sentence is suspended is excluded. Sentences imposed on the operational participants in fraud frequently exceed 1 year, so a final sentence of immediate imprisonment falls squarely within the provision.

Even where deportation does not follow, the risks remain that an application to extend the period of stay will be refused (Article 21) or that the status of residence will be revoked (Article 22-4). A student will in practice be expelled from the school, and a person with a work-related status will lose the employment contract, so that the very foundation of the status disappears.

The objective in a criminal case involving a foreign national is therefore not to obtain a suspended sentence. It is to obtain a decision not to prosecute before any indictment is filed. That means presenting the prosecutor with concrete material on how the person became involved, what position the person held within the organisation, how far the person participated in the deception, and what efforts have been made towards compensation, and asking for a decision not to institute prosecution. These few weeks before charge determine on which side of a border the rest of a person’s life is spent.

What are the three things I can do right now

First, exercise the right to silence. In a Japanese interrogation, what is said is compiled into a written statement drafted by the investigator, and once it is signed it becomes powerful evidence at trial. A single sentence offered in an attempt to explain one’s good faith is always at risk of being recorded as an admission of the very facts from which intent is inferred. Saying nothing until the defence strategy has been settled with a lawyer is the safest course.

Second, appoint defence counsel. Immediately after arrest, the duty lawyer system is available; where continuous involvement and a shared strategy are needed, privately retained counsel should be appointed. Either way, call a lawyer within the first 72 hours. Whether detention can be prevented is decided by what is done in that period.

Third, interpretation. The interpreter provided by the investigating authorities stands on the side of the investigating authorities, and the smallest shift in the choice of words is fixed permanently in the written statement in a form that can be used against the suspect. Under Article 36(1)(b) of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, an arrested foreign national has the right to communicate with, and be visited by, the consular officers of his or her own country, yet notification of that right is sometimes delayed. This is why it matters that defence counsel secures independent interpretation.

About our office

Funado International Law Office is located in Toshima-ku, Tokyo. Attorney Daisuke Matsumura (Daiichi Tokyo Bar Association, registration number 59077, admitted in 2019) concentrates his practice on criminal defence and immigration procedure for foreign nationals, with a particular focus on Chinese nationals.

In the field of special fraud, the office has obtained a decision not to prosecute for a woman in her twenties alleged to have acted as an ATM withdrawer, by presenting in the round the deceptive and coercive conduct of the person directing her and the absence of criminal intent on her part. In another matter, a client re-arrested several times as a receiver obtained decisions not to prosecute on every one of the cases, following sustained and disciplined handling of the interrogations and repeated formal protests against improper questioning.

The office handles the immigration proceedings that follow the criminal process with the same continuity. In the case of a woman facing deportation on an allegation of promoting illegal employment, the office brought litigation testing how far the principle of individual culpability extends, challenging the established practice under which neither intent nor negligence is required for a ground of deportation to be established, and pursued the matter to the appellate level; special permission to stay was subsequently granted. The proposition that contesting intent and negligence from the criminal stage builds the foundation for the arguments later made in immigration proceedings is a point the office is currently litigating.

Attorney Matsumura personally handles every stage of a case, from the first detention visit to the close of trial. A dedicated in-house Chinese interpreter experienced in cases involving foreign nationals is present at the office; for languages other than Chinese, interpreters are arranged according to the requirements of the individual case. Renewals and changes of status of residence after the criminal proceedings are handled on a one-stop basis together with an affiliated immigration solicitor.

Past results reflect the particular circumstances of each case and are not a guarantee that a similar outcome will be obtained.

In closing

Most people arrested as receivers or ATM withdrawers know nothing of the structure above them and have taken instructions through a messaging application from someone whose name and face they have never seen. Japanese criminal law nonetheless imposes responsibility for the whole enterprise on that single fragment of a role. Do not take comfort in a light offence on the arrest warrant. Call a lawyer before submitting to interrogation. There genuinely are cases in which a proper response in the first days changes what follows.

This article is general commentary. For an individual case, please consult a lawyer directly.

This article reflects information available as of September 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Q. Can I contact a family member who has been arrested?

A. Where the person has been detained and a prohibition on contact and visits has been imposed, visits and correspondence with family members are restricted. Defence counsel is not subject to that restriction and may visit, so the realistic route is for counsel to establish what is happening and relay it to the family. Counsel may also apply for the prohibition to be lifted in part.

Q. Am I guilty even though I never received any payment?

A. Yes. Neither fraud nor theft requires that the person carrying out the act received a reward. Whether a reward was paid, and how much, is taken into account only as one factor in sentencing.

Q. If I repay the victim, will the case be dropped?

A. Compensation and settlement with the victim are important factors in seeking a decision not to prosecute, but they do not by themselves determine the outcome. In special fraud cases the victims are often numerous, and the money has usually passed to the organisation and is no longer in the hands of the person arrested, so whether and how compensation can be made calls for careful assessment in each case.

Q. Can I not simply go home to my own country and let the matter end there?

A. While under arrest or detention you cannot leave Japan. Even if released, a person who is deported after removal proceedings is in principle barred from landing in Japan for 5 years or 10 years, which makes any future visit difficult for a long time. This is a further reason why changing the outcome at the criminal stage matters.

About the author

Daisuke Matsumura, Attorney at Law

Daiichi Tokyo Bar Association (registration number 59077, admitted 2019)

Funado International Law Office (Fuse Building Main Wing 3F, 3-4-10 Takada, Toshima-ku, Tokyo)

His practice centres on criminal defence and immigration procedure for foreign nationals, principally clients of Chinese nationality. His results include an acquittal on a charge under the Stimulants Control Act (possession for the purpose of profit), decisions not to prosecute in special fraud cases, and grants of special permission to stay in matters regarded as difficult.

Funado International Law Office

Website: https://matsumura-lawoffice.jp/

WeChat ID: matsumura1119

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