Police crack down on vast sex worker recruitment network

Crime doesn’t pay, they say, but it seems that’s not true if you’re in the recruitment racket for prostitutes.

According to multiple media reports, a scouting group called Access introduced 78,000 women to sex work at around 1,800 establishments nationwide over a five-year period from 2019. Let those numbers sink in: 78,000 women and 1,800 brothels.

Access earned ¥6 billion in commission, police estimate.

The scout group had contracts with adult entertainment establishments nationwide, and recruited women via social media. They expanded their influence by sending women’s profiles, such as their age and bust size, to the establishments in their network. The brothels then took part in a kind of auction, with the highest bidder winning an introduction to the woman.

Depending on how much the woman subsequently earned for the establishment, a proportion was paid back to Access as a finder’s fee.

Led by 34-year-old suspect Kazuma Endo, Access began its activities around 2019 at the latest. It was a major operation, possibly involving as many as 300 people, including students and housewives, who took part in the scouting activities. People were attracted to involvement with the group because it was easy money that they could earn with just their phone.

The scouts themselves were ranked according to the amount of commission earned by the women they introduced. This encouraged competition among scouts and better results.

Access was fully aware that its activities were illegal and created a manual for members about what to do if arrested: say nothing and pretend to be a scout working on an individual capacity.

We reported yesterday on the arrest of several scouts in Kabukicho. The police is cracking down on such scouting and pimping, which fall under the category of human trafficking. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police now has a special investigation headquarters to investigate these crimes.

The revised Entertainment and Amusement Act comes into force with some exceptions on June 28. It prohibits paying rewards to scouts who introduce women to adult entertainment establishments, so we can expect to see more arrests of scouts.

Around twelve Access executives have now been arrested and charged for violating the Anti-Prostitution Law as the culmination of an eighteen-month investigation. Arrests were initially announced in January.

The Shinjuku-based Endo was rearrested (for the eleventh time) on a charge of hiding ¥1.2 billion in income and violating the Organized Crime Punishment Act.

Police also hit the some easy targets among the establishments that hired women that Access recruited, including soaplands in Saitama, Oita, Ishikawa, and Gifu prefectures. The image above shows investigators raiding a soapland in Kawaguchi in January.