Japan phishing scam victimizes Mizuho customer

Illegal transfer suspected through phishing.

This is the view of bank officials about a Mizuho customer who lost money while banking online.

Several hundred thousands of yen were transferred to another account after the customer followed instructions on what is suspected to have been a fake page on the bank's website.

The page asked for the customer's password and personal identification code.

There is a growing number of "phishing" scams in Japan.

Earlier, some ¥2 million was illegally transferred from a man's account to another account after he followed similar instructions on the website of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., according to police.

The two banks have frozen their transfer destination accounts for the police investigation.

Pages containing fake instructions, allegedly designed to steal personal information for use in illegal money transfers, have also been seen on the genuine websites of Japan Post Bank and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.

Japan's National Police Agency detected 65 such cases, including 51 in which bank customers typed in passwords.

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