Weird one in the mailbox tonight.
There was a Japan Post letterpack for my wife, the contents of which were one plastic insurance card\*\*, nothing more nothing less. The name on the card matches the sender on the envelope.
The envelope is from Tokyo, where my wife doesn’t know anyone she can think of and she doesn’t recognize the name at all.
According to the insurance card, the holder is a forty-year-old woman. There’s an address on the card, but no employer. The address does not match the sender’s address on the envelope.
There is a cell number on the envelope as well, but it went immediately to voicemail when I called (after 11pm).
The card is not new. It was issued in 2019 and has some obvious wear.
My wife is regrettably not careful with her personal information. She’s been targeted by identity thieves, scammers, and spammers many times before. She cannot be convinced to see the point in worrying about it; she sees it as inevitable.
I can’t think of any reason someone would mail their insurance card to another person, and it’s extremely weird that they have my wife’s name\*, address, and phone number, so I am inclined to think this is some sort of phishing scam, but I cannot fathom how it is supposed pay off.
\* The name is written in Japanese Kanji, but my wife is from China. This is not the way someone who knows her would write it: it is the way she is occasionally forced to write it on official forms or by Japanese websites.
\*\* The card is Japanese. It looks similar to the insurance cards we have as *seshain*, but it is a different color and conspicuously lacks a place for the name of the holder’s employer.
Anyone ever heard of a scam that involves sending a complete stranger an important personal item like an insurance card?
2 comments
If she gets a call tomorrow from the “Guizhou Pokice Bureau” inquiring about ID theft, then you see how the second hammer of this scam falls.
There are so many scams around the world targeting Chinese people living in foreign countries. They usually threaten deportation or police action. I’ve been getting some of these myself and I’m not even Chinese.
So I would suspect that there is a chance it is a similar scam. She might soon get a call from the “Chinese embassy”.