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The story
A man in his 70s from Suzuka City, Mie Prefecture, was offered ¥9 million in exchange for “sperm donation,” then was instructed via LINE by someone posing as a lawyer to buy as many as 571 gift cards at convenience stores, ultimately being swindled out of roughly ¥38 million in total. Why did he go along with a deal that, looked at calmly, doesn’t even add up — paying ¥38 million just to receive ¥9 million? The thread debated why elderly people make such easy targets for scams, how judgment can shift with age, and the fact that stores never stopped him from buying gift cards in bulk, with reactions mixing sympathy for the victim and sheer disbelief.
“I’ll Pay ¥9 Million for Sperm Donation” — 70-Something Man Scammed Out of ¥38 Million | Mie TV Broadcasting
2026.10.15 10:05
A man in his 70s living in Suzuka City, Mie Prefecture, was swindled out of roughly ¥38 million after sending gift card numbers and other details exactly as instructed via LINE by someone posing as a lawyer.
Source: mietv.com / Original article here
What people said
Especially the elderly
That's why fraud never goes down
Women get taken in by romance scams, men get taken in by sperm-donation scams… how are we even supposed to defend against this?
Pure herd-mentality, full-on baby-boomer-generation mindset on display
Stuff like 'ditch the car' or 'take up shigin (traditional chanted poetry)' — there's no logic or reason behind any of it
For men in their late 70s, the dementia rate is already over 10%
But it's also an age where people around them still assume they're fine
So if scammers specifically target that group, they've got roughly a 1-in-10 shot at successfully conning them
And nowadays, with all the personal data leaks out there, organized crime groups have mountains of that kind of data sitting around, which lets them run scams really efficiently
Just on its own, that doesn't even add up, does it
And somehow it's always the guys who fall for these rookie-level scams who turn out to have piles of money saved up…
It says he used multiple convenience stores, but…
Did the clerks just look the other way?
He must've been buying 10+ cards at a time in one go — that's clearly suspicious
As long as it counts as sales, money beats morals every time
This one's already a lost cause
Even when people comment telling him it's a scam
He's too far gone with dementia to listen
Chilling — there was someone messaging the scammer from an account under their real full name, with photos of their grandkids posted right on it
There are plenty of people out there that awful, basically on the level of a personality disorder
The actual premise of the scam itself can honestly be almost anything
It's not necessarily the victim's fault
But like in this case, when something's already off with the victim, the odds of them getting taken go way up
This type of person gets scammed even when they're not elderly
There's no saving them
This guy probably had something going on too that an article just can't capture
Well, it's probably like how 20-somethings look to a 40-year-old, so I kind of get the appeal of someone a reasonable bit younger lol
It's probably because a woman around 60 who's been through caring for her own aging parents tends to be kind to people her parents' age
Whereas for women in their 30s-40s, old men basically register as gross, smelly, something to avoid
The livestreamer: 'Go borrow from a consumer loan company. Sell your organs too. Are you really okay with me and my family dying of stage 4 cancer?'
You can kind of guess what sales pitch worked on him lol
For men, look up how old Al Pacino was when he had a kid — you'll laugh
Even if most of it is wasted effort, landing just one person can bring in huge money
Humans really are greedy
It's not just about the money — he gets talked into believing he still has worth
Once you poke at the helplessness and despair of growing old, people who've already slipped into dementia fall instantly…
Trump: 'Facts.'
Apparently Osaka people don't fall for 'it's me, it's me' scams (impersonating a relative on the phone), but they fall for tax-refund scams more than anywhere else in Japan
It's the 'this will get refunded to you later' tactic, right?
Background and discussion points on this topic
Losses from these “special fraud” scams nationwide are estimated at hundreds of billions of yen a year, and elderly victims still make up a large share of that total. Posing as lawyers or public officials and making contact over LINE, then having victims buy gift cards instead of handing over cash and send in the card numbers, has become the dominant method in recent years precisely because it’s harder to trace and harder to prosecute. The thread zeroed in on why he agreed to a seemingly irrational deal — paying ¥38 million to receive ¥9 million — but what tends to get overlooked is that this kind of scheme isn’t really targeting the victim’s reasoning at all; it’s engineered to exploit time pressure and a reflexive deference to the authority of a ‘lawyer’ title. Buying gift cards in bulk at a convenience store could draw a clerk’s attention as a suspicious transaction, but that isn’t enforced consistently across every store, exposing the limits of front-line fraud prevention.
*This article is compiled as excerpts and a summary from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “‘I’ll Pay ¥9 Million for Sperm Donation’ — 70-Something Man Scammed Out of ¥38 Million in Mie.”
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