Japan counts the ads that use a famous face, and names the faces

Why this case matters

Nobody else counts this.

Every regulator warns about fake celebrity endorsement ads. Japan’s National Police Agency records how many people were reached by one, and how much they lost: 3,202 cases and ¥44.09 billion through November 2025, from banner advertising alone.

That is 39.0% of the country’s SNS-type investment fraud cases and 41.2% of the money — from a single advertising channel, in a single country, in eleven months.

What the route is

The NPA’s description is specific. Adverts using the name and image of a well-known figure, or direct messages, leading the recipient into an investment group on LINE. From there the pattern is the one documented on our fake platform page.

The advert is not the fraud. It is the door, and it works because the face on it belongs to somebody the viewer already has a reason to trust — an economist, an author, an investor who genuinely gives financial advice.

The counter-campaign, and why it is unusual

The NPA’s response was to run prevention publicity with the people whose faces had been stolen.

On 12 November 2025 with 三橋貴明 (Takaaki Mitsuhashi), 両＠リベ大学長 and 森永康平 (Kohei Morinaga). On 15 December 2025 with 本田健 (Ken Honda), 馬渕磨理子 (Mariko Mabuchi) and 桐谷広人 (Hiroto Kiritani).

Those are public figures appearing in a police campaign about the misuse of their own likenesses, which is a public act on the record — and it is a smarter intervention than a generic warning. A viewer who has seen a real economist say “the advert with my face is not mine” has a specific memory attached to a specific face, which is how the fraud is actually encountered.

It also solves a problem the impersonated person cannot solve alone. Denying a fake endorsement on your own account reaches your existing audience; doing it inside a police campaign reaches the audience the advert was bought to reach.

The scale it sits inside

Japan’s SNS-type investment fraud: 8,217 cases and ¥107.11 billion through November 2025, up 37.6% and 34.8%.

Its SNS-type romance fraud, counted separately: 4,992 cases and ¥47.95 billion, with a single month setting a record at ¥5.39 billion.

Together with special fraud, 38,121 cases and ¥276.39 billion — against 27,994 cases and ¥172.52 billion in the same period a year earlier.

What it means elsewhere

Japan is not unusual in having this problem. It is unusual in measuring it.

Which means the 41.2% figure is the best available estimate anywhere of how much investment fraud arrives through a fake endorsement — and there is no reason to think the proportion is lower in countries that do not count it.