My mother-in-law was defrauded of 50 million yen.

I'm just gonna drop this as a PSA. We're still sifting through the fallout, and it's unlikely I'll ever know the complete details of what went down.

I can tell you the operation she was a victim of was sophisticated and finely calibrated. Their psy-op game was top-notch, and naturally, they left no trace for the police to follow up.

That said, "She did what!? How could anyone be so stupid!" is still the dominant theme among the siblings who lost their inheritance. For those who would accuse them of victim blaming, I submit to you that she handed over 50 million yen in cash, more or less her entire savings, to people from whom she had bought nothing because they told her to over the phone…

My mother-in-law is in her 70's. She lives alone on a country farm. As the youngest member of a large family, she's inherited a lot from the older siblings who passed away, some of whom were quite wealthy. She is healthy and active, and media literate, and my wife is in regular contact, calling a couple of times a week typically. My brother-in-law less so, but relations are still good. Both families visit at obon and new years. I'd characterize my mother-in-law as technologically illiterate, but until yesterday I would have called her strong-minded and street-smart. She seemed like someone with a healthy distrust of strangers and a tight hold on expenses. Someone who took pride in their competence and who I would not have dared to advise with trivialities like "oh btw if any company calls and asks for cash as payment, it's probably a scam".

My point is she had all possible resources available to off-ramp this, and the mental acuity to make use of those off-ramps, yet this still happened. One mention in one phone call to either of her kids, a quick web search, or asking for advice at the post office, bank, or police would have been enough.

If this happened to her after all that, it could happen to your relatives too. I'm unsure what advice I can give since "ask your parents-in-law to call someone before giving their money away to strangers" is unlikely to work as intended. In hindsight: The first thing is to become aware of the risk (elderly parents with large bank accounts, even if they are of sound mind and independent), and the second is to mitigate that risk by arranging to put the money in a place that cannot be withdrawn without oversight.

**

Edit: I don't know the details of the scam, but I can provide a rough outline. It goes something like this:

You get a call about a solar panel project and the caller would like your support. You say "hell yeah I support solar power" so the caller says great can I have your name and contact details, please.

Sometime later you get another call, this time from a company thanking you for investing in the solar panel project but unfortunately you've missed the deadline to pay for the contract you agreed to. This is no problem, however, as we can extend the contract deadline but you will have to pay a small fee to process the paperwork. For convenience, it will be simpler if you prepare the (some small, almost trivial amount) in an envelope and give it to the employee who will come and pick it up.

If the red flags are not raised by this point and you decide to go through with the payment (just for now, you might think, or just to settle this quietly), the payment requests will keep coming over the next months, larger and larger, for different fees, fines, investments and, finally, a request to lend the company a large amount of money to stay afloat and preserve your investment. Whatever reasons they can come up with. And always by the same payment method – handing over cash to the "company employee" who shows up at the door.

The ramp was so gradual that I can only imagine how my Mother-in-law must have been gaslit to the point that loaning a company money – in cash, by herself, with no contract – didn't even raise her suspension. She only came to her senses after the deadline passed for the company to return the money she lent, without result.

Yes she then went to the police. No, the phone records are of no use because all the phones used were burners. No, there is no paper trail, and no, there she doesn't have a security cam installed to ID the car/runner.