Deai-kei smartphone app blackmailers steal cash on the street

Four men have been arrested in Tokyo for theft by Kanagawa police after they blackmailed a man they met through a smartphone deai-kei app.

Deai-kei refers to the portals online and off where men go to meet girls for sex. It is somewhere between adultery and prostitution, but the variables are huge. You might be talking to a few men posing as teenagers or you might be arranging to meet a genuine girl who wants some cash for a new handbag.

The four men were in their teens and twenties. They apparently scouted a thirty-year-old man from Fujisawa City via the app and invited him to the mean streets of Kawasaki City to “meet a lady.” But then things turned nasty. “Don’t touch someone’s girl,” they told him and through threats extracted tens of thousands of yen. They were arrested in early August and three of the group have admitted their guilt. The fourth claims him “menaced” the man but did not steal any money.

Scandals about deai-kei sites and services have been very common lately, occurring almost weekly. The media and police are being very vigilant and vocal recently, though no specific campaign has been announced.

Essentially you join a site or service thinking you are able to converse with and then meet certain ladies. However, if it seems too good to be true — it is. No, you are not arranging to meet members of AKB48, just some guys sitting at a desk in Chiba. A lot of the sites seem to be fake and duped users have even been suing some sites.

It will also be interesting to see what effect the launch in Japan of Ashley Madison, the adultery dating website, has on these fringe but prolific sites. Ashley Madison is open, clean and with an advertising budget. It might just be the final nail in the coffin for widespread use of deai-kei.