Nearly every week in Japan, headlines tell a similar story: a foreign national arrested for bank fraud. A teenage boy caught acting as a getaway driver. Two college students, two months into a “delivery job,” nabbed while breaking into a stranger’s home.
These aren’t isolated crimes — they’re part of a growing underground pipeline known as yami baito, or “dark part-time jobs,” where people, often young and broke and recruited through social media, are lured into illegal work disguised as easy cash gigs.
But what exactly is yami baito? And why are so many young people getting pulled into Japan’s criminal underworld — sometimes without realizing it until it’s far too late?
The Rise of Yami Baito
The word baito is a Japanese contraction of arubaito, itself borrowed from the German arbeit, meaning work. In postwar Japan, baito became shorthand for part-time jobs. But attach the kanji yami, or “darkness”, and the term transforms into something far more sinister.
“Yami baito” refers to illegal or criminal work disguised as ordinary part-time gigs. Complete strangers are recruited through platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and Telegram — promised quick money for easy tasks like “picking up a package” or “helping an old person with their bank card.” In reality, these recruits are often acting as fraud couriers (ukeko), cash collectors or even burglars.
The term yami baito began surfacing in police and media reports in the early 2020s as fraud syndicates shifted their recruitment tactics from underground “dark sites” to mainstream social media. In 2023, it entered the national lexicon in full force, making the Top 10 of the U-Can New Words and Buzzwords Awards, signaling both its pervasiveness and the scale of public concern.
Who’s Applying — and Why the Numbers Keep Climbing
The raise in dark part-time work can be linked to the rise of part-time work as a whole. Many young people struggle to find consistent employment, and in a 2021 survey by the Ministry of Justice, more than half of fraud offenders in their twenties said they would rather earn money easily than work hard. And though work is growing more scarce, pressures continue mounting, including rising student debt.
In 2023 the National Police Agency (NPA) arrested 2,373 people for roles in special fraud schemes. Nearly 70 percent of suspects were under 30, including a significant number of high school students. Over 40 percent said they’d been recruited through social media, lured by promises of quick money — many posts offer ¥50,000 to ¥100,000 per task, for jobs listed as “courier” or “assistant.” Eighty-two individuals had clicked listings that masqueraded as ordinary “day-labor” gigs on legitimate job apps.
During the recruiting process, many applicants are asked to submit a photo ID, a selfie and sometimes even their parents’ contact details, framed as routine onboarding. That information becomes leverage. The crime group can threaten them if they try to back out: Their ID will be leaked, their family members exposed or targeted, their face posted online.
Yami baito encompasses a wide range of illegal activities. In some cases, the work is contactless and feels much closer to gig work than a crime: Applicants receive instructions via encrypted chat apps — scan a code, pick up a package, drop off a bank card. The gig worker knows next to nothing about what they’re actually doing. Sometimes, the work involves doing fake surveys or data collection, which scammers will use for identity theft. And sometimes it’s blatantly illegal — robbery, breaking and entering or schemes that target the elderly.
Most arrests involve low-level operatives: ukeko (cash collectors), dashiko (ATM couriers) and lookouts. These roles account for about 75 percent of all suspects. Most don’t realize the scope of what they’re involved in until they’re already under arrest. Conversely, fewer than two percent of those arrested are organizers.
What the Government Is Doing
In December 2024, Japan’s Cabinet adopted emergency countermeasures to curb yami baito recruitment. Key policies include mandating stricter ID verification for new user accounts and pressuring platforms to take down job posts that lack employer names, contact details, or descriptions — now explicitly classified as violations of the Employment Security Law. The government is also considering allowing investigators to use fake IDs to pose as job applicants and sign up for shady jobs.
Job-matching apps are taking measures as well. Timee now screens every job listing before it goes live, 24 hours a day, year-round. Workers’ personal information is withheld until after a job is confirmed, making it harder for recruiters to exploit them pre-emptively.
Still, many in law enforcement argue that enforcement alone is not enough. Prevention efforts must include digital literacy programs in schools, financial support for at-risk youth and community education on identifying fake job ads. Crime moves fast. Policy needs to catch up.
