If you think that senior investment scams would describe seniors who had been taken in by investment scams, then think again.  In this case it was a senior who took a large number of other people for a great deal of money.

The story of this appears in the Seniors World Chronicle, which is a Daily Digest of International News About Aging.  The headline was: JAPAN: 75-year old arrested over $1.4-bn investment scam.

Japanese police arrested Kazutsugi Nami, 75, chairman of now bankrupt bedding supplier L&G K.K., who built a cult-like status among thousands of investors whom he reportedly defrauded of at least $1.4 billion.   He had promised 36 percent annual returns. His company even issued its own electronic money, which he predicted would be a hit during the global economic crisis.

Many of the victims were elderly people, who initially bought everything from vegetables to futons with the currency and would attend promotional fairs set up by the 75-year-old Nami.  Nami swindled 37,000 investors out of a total of 126 billion yen (1.4 billion dollars), the Jiji Press news agency and public broadcaster NHK said, quoting investigation sources.

Nami’s company introduced its own electronic money, which was fed into investors’ cellphones and used to buy items including food, jewelry and clothes at bazaars and online shops.  The money was called “enten”, apparently a combination of the Japanese words for the yen currency and paradise.  People who put up cash one time for the company got the same sum of enten in exchange every year, making them feel that their money would never disappear even if they spent it.

As usual if it looks too good to be true, then it probably is to be avoided.  Do not assume that older people are any more or any less to be trusted than people of any other age.  That’s been an expensive lesson for all those Japanese investors.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Japanese businessman arrested over £1.7bn fraud (telegraph.co.uk)

Technorati Tags: Japan, Kazutsugi Nami, scam, yen