Juna Yamada is currently facing charges for claiming to understand binary options trading and capable of offering investment advice. Based on the news posted online by the Japanese newspaper The Mainichi Shimbun, the former member of the Japanese all-girl pop band SKE48 allegedly defrauded a man she met on a dating application out of 500,000 yen or roughly $4,580.
We find this news relevant and a must-read for binary options traders and those interested in this investment technique. We want to warn our readers that fraudsters abound today. Yamada is among four individuals captured by the Aichi Prefectural Police on Tuesday, March 16. The 22-year-old singer joins three other people arrested.
They are Reo Taguchi, a 22-year-old university student; Mikoto Takahashi, 23, a self-described retail worker; and Hiromu Kurumadachi, 24, self-employed. All of the four suspects reside in Nagoya’s Naka Ward. Based on the prefectural police’s filing, Yamada utilized a false name to register for a dating application.
She then allegedly invited the victim, who reportedly decided to trust her. The victim remarked that he trusted Yamada after learning that the former SKE48 member’s income is 10 million yen or approximately $91,650 as listed on her social media profile. Additionally, Yamada reportedly included many images of expensive brand-name products.
The victim paid Yamada and Taguchi 500,000 yen for investment materials, but he said that the documents he obtained did not contain any lucid information on investment techniques. Moreover, the police suspect that Yamada and her gang bilked over 100 people out of approximately 58 million yen or an estimated $531,393 in total between August 2019 and March 2020.
The authorities are currently investigating the complete scope of the scam. The police said that Taguchi admitted that their gang had no actual history of earning money through binary options trading and zero expertise on how to perform it. Yamada and her group face charges including fraud and violation of the Act on Specified Commercial Transactions. She and Taguchi have reportedly denied a component of the allegations, while the other two suspects said that they deny all of the accusations.
We want to praise the Japanese police for their success in arresting Yamada and her cohorts. She deserves the punishment for misrepresentation and fraud. Additionally, we believe that social media profiles today are not dependable ways to know whether a person can be trusted.
We want to warn our readers that they should make sure that the people offering them binary options trading and investment advice are professionals. There are ways on how to verify these people’s identities, such as licenses and institutions of affiliation.