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The story
It has come to light that 11 students living in the dormitory of Joetsu High School, a private school in Joetsu City, Niigata Prefecture, posed as women on social media to scam money out of ordinary men. The amounts taken reportedly ranged from 800 yen to over 100,000 yen, and the number of students believed to be involved is said to exceed 30. Alongside this case, the school also became aware that 21 students had been repeatedly drinking and smoking inside the dorm, and held an all-school assembly on September 24 to warn students about the issue. The dorm is said to be used mainly by soccer team students who enrolled from outside the prefecture, and on 5ch, a wide range of opinions were exchanged covering the school’s hensachi (academic difficulty rating), the realities of college-prep schools in rural areas, and how minors should be disciplined.
It was learned on the 9th that students living in the dormitory of Joetsu High School, a private school in Joetsu City, Niigata Prefecture, had committed fraud by posing as women on social networking sites to scam money out of people. It also emerged that students had repeatedly been drinking and smoking inside the dorm, with the number of students believed to be involved reportedly exceeding 30.
According to the school, the dorm is mainly used by soccer team students who came from outside the prefecture to enroll. Eleven of the dorm students allegedly posed as women on social media to exchange messages with men, and some of them reportedly scammed amounts ranging from 800 yen to over 100,000 yen out of their targets.
After becoming aware of the matter, the school contacted the police and also reported it to the prefecture’s university and private school promotion division. It reportedly held an all-school assembly on September 24 to warn students, and notified parents of the matter by email on the 5th of this month.
Source: yomiuri.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Expulsion and a wrecked credit record are already locked in — turning their lives around isn't really on the table anymore.
Either their parents or relatives support them for life, or they end up with the yakuza.
Japan needs to actually build a system that lets people rehabilitate.
Otherwise they end up with no job prospects — best case, welfare.
Worst case, they keep racking up victims and land in prison (which costs about 6 million yen per inmate per year).
And then we just end up importing foreign workers to do the working and tax-paying instead.
Damn… that's rough.
Ah, I see — so it's basically a catch-all for kids like that.
And on top of that they're all packed into a dorm together… nothing good was ever going to come of this.
They're probably gone now, but maybe those prison-adjacent "reform" high schools actually served a purpose.
They're criminals, so an arrest would be normal.
Why hasn't anyone been arrested?
It just came out, so the police are probably still building their case.
Worst case, no one's even filed a police report yet, so the investigation might not have officially started.
If this doesn't get you expelled, I don't know what would.
It's different from how things work in the big metro areas.
Ah, so it's one of those Nissei Gakuen-type schools (a chain known for strict, dorm-based "problem student" education).
Japan's university system really is broken.
It's basically a feeder school for "F-rank" (bottom-tier, barely-selective) universities.
You kind of have to keep them separate from normal people… At this rate, if you're not careful, you'll end up with people stealing wallets at the office too.
Rural hensachi numbers especially aren't reliable.
In truly rural areas, it's less about hensachi and more about whether you can actually commute there — so a high school's hensachi isn't a reliable measure.
You can only pick from schools within commuting range, which is exactly why dorms exist in the first place.
Even in Tokyo, if you're out on the remote islands or in Okutama, your high school options are limited and you just go with what's available.
Your alma mater isn't getting 10 kids into Todai every year from a single school.
Kids who work hard and take things seriously exist everywhere in Japan.
If most of your school's grads got into national universities, your point would mean something, but it doesn't sound like that's the case.
Before "F-rank" universities multiplied everywhere, Niigata Prefecture had the lowest university enrollment rate in Japan every year except for Okinawa.
Niigata's high school hensachi numbers aren't reliable.
A hensachi of 50 in an education-focused prefecture would feel more like 65 by Niigata standards.
If it's private, they should be able to push kids toward expulsion once they commit a crime.
Seems like an unusual school culture.
That would also help with the declining-birthrate, under-enrollment problem.
You could shrink the number of schools a little each year — pretty rational.
I like it.
They should cut a big chunk all at once.
That frees up tax money for other things.
If possible, I think it's better to spend tax money on poor kids who are academically and ethically solid and take things seriously.
The bad apples really don't appreciate anything.
Some families have both parents posted overseas for work, and leaving a kid home alone felt too risky, so they picked a school with a dorm.
Then there are kids with strained family situations — kids who are fine themselves, but due to complicated family circumstances basically get politely pushed out of the house. It's not always about bad behavior — that's what I've seen in my own circle.
And then there are kids recruited nationally for sports — that happens too, but there are quite a few scandals from that group as well.
I think there are plenty of private college-prep schools with dorms too.
I know a kid who hated the dorm so much they commute two hours each way to a school in the next prefecture, doing homework on the train.
They'd probably rather be reading manga.
When would kids who are constantly committing crimes like these guys even have time to study?
That's different from kids who just don't go to school at all.
At college-prep schools, some kids study hard AND go to cram school or prep school on top of that — there are exams waiting for them outside of school too.
Kids who can't afford that buy recommended reference books or borrow them from the library and study at home.
Even at prep schools, there are kids who win regional or national tournaments with their clubs.
It's not just speech contests or national shogi tournaments either — some kids compete in national sports tournaments or even international competitions.
These kids genuinely barely have time to goof off.
Sure, these days you can read manga on your phone, but…
What I'm saying is the ratios here are just way too different between these groups.
Background and Key Points of This Story
This case calls for some care, since it actually bundles together two problems of very different scale being reported at the same time: 11 dorm students who committed “catfishing fraud” by posing as women on social media, and 21 students who repeatedly drank and smoked inside the dorm. The total number of students suspected of involvement is said to exceed 30, but that doesn’t mean all of them took part in the fraud. Juvenile cases in Japan are normally handled as family-court matters rather than ordinary criminal prosecutions, so it isn’t unusual, procedurally speaking, that no one was arrested immediately after the case came to light. On the thread, opinions split over the structure of rural private high schools using dorms to house athletes recruited from outside the prefecture, and over how much weight to put on school hensachi rankings — though some posts drifted off-topic into sweeping generalizations about Niigata residents as a whole. With the school not yet having disclosed whether victims have filed police reports or what prevention measures it plans to take, the full scope of the case and how students will ultimately be disciplined remain unclear.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Express+) thread “11 Joetsu High School Dorm Students Pose as Women Online to Scam Money… 21 Students Also Caught Drinking and Smoking in Dorm.”
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