Thousands of Japanese men defrauded by paying to date Atsuko Maeda

If you think something is too good to be true, you’re probably right.

That’s our advice, which should have been followed by the thousands of men who thought they had the chance to go on a date with Atsuko Maeda.

A 38-year-old man was arrested earlier this month for operating a deai-kei dating website that claimed to offer dates with the former AKB48 idol.

He had fled the country but foolishly returned in late September.

Maeda is now a mainstream actress and cannot even be “met” at the famous AKB48 handshaking events. But that didn’t seemed to occur to the 370,000 people who paid money in response to messages claiming to be from the lady herself.

We originally reported on the company behind this scam, Wingnet, in 2013, when the scam was first exposed.

The CEO went on the run and escaped arrest by staying in Taiwan, unlike many of his employees who were arrested in summer 2013.

The unnamed man had operated 22 websites, defrauding around 370,000 of 11.6 billion yen in sales between February 2010 and June 2012.

The “service” would charge users hundreds of yen each time to send a message. Men were tempted by messages apparently from idols like Maeda asking for their contact details.