A 25-year-old Japanese woman was given a nine-year prison sentence on Monday for defrauding three men out of a total of 155 million yen ($1 million) on a dating app and selling a manual on how to scam men out of their money.
The Nagoya District Court also fined Mai Watanabe, known by the moniker "itadaki joshi Riri-chan," literally "sugar baby Riri," 8 million yen ($51,700) for the scams.
Prosecutors had sought a 13-year sentence and a fine of 12 million yen.
"The crime is a very insidious one utilizing sweet-talking to make the victims from a dating app fall in love," Presiding Judge Yoichi Omura said, adding the manual "encouraged similar crimes."
According to the indictment, between March 2021 and August 2023, Watanabe duped a man in his 50s with a story that she needed money to pay off a debt, swindling approximately 117 million yen from him.
She told two other men a similar story, bilking them out of a total of about 38 million yen between April and August 2023.
The court also convicted her of selling her manual to a woman and evading income tax by hiding around 40 million yen derived from the scams.
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