2024-12-09
17 分钟Its 6pm a bright evening in the heart of Tokyo's swanky Ginza district.
The streets are lined with high end boutiques and shoppers are enjoying the relaxed atmosphere.
Suddenly, the calm is shattered.
Inside a luxury watch shop, three men in masks start smashing through the display cases with crowbars.
Bystanders watch in disbelief, some filming the incident on their phones as the criminals stuff Rolexes worth more than a million dollars into their rucksacks and steal away in a getaway car.
Just a few hours later, police catch up with the perpetrators, mostly teenagers.
It emerges that at least one of those involved was apparently recruited via a social media post.
The robbery, which happened in May 2023, shocked Japan not just because of the country's famously low crime rate, but because it exposed a growing online phenomenon known as yamibaito.
These are dark part time jobs where ordinary people are recruited for criminal activities using social media.
I'm Dan Hardoon and for BBC Trending, I've been exploring the shadowy world of yamibaito.
I've been speaking to someone who was lured into a life of crime by a job posting he saw online.
They started threatening me, saying they know where I live.
They said, we are going to set fire to your house or throw you in the ocean.
And to a former criminal mastermind in.
Charge of recruitment, these yamibaito were targeting people who were desperate enough to respond to these ads even though they looked suspicious.
People who were desperate for money, people who had debt.
I'll also be exposing the latest techniques the recruiters are using to draw people in.
So I asked him, this is my very first time, is there a risk of getting arrested?
And they replied, and I quote, the risk of you getting caught is low.
First though, let's clarify what yamibaito actually means.