The National Police Agency will launch its first investigation into online casinos that are run overseas. Gambling on such sites has spread rapidly among younger people in Japan, which has led some of them into debt and illicit part-time jobs.

The NPA will share the results of its investigation with relevant ministries and agencies as a step toward regulating access to such gambling sites and measures tackling addiction.

Gambling is allowed in Japan in certain forms, such as horse racing, but betting online is illegal even if the site is legally operated overseas. However, there is a widespread misconception that gambling sites operated legally overseas are legal to use here.

A survey by the Tokyo-based digital analysis firm Similarweb Ltd. showed that there were about 700,000 visits per month to online casinos from Japan in December 2018, but that figure then increased sharply from 2019, reaching about 83 million visits per month in September 2021.

According to Yoichi Torihata, professor emeritus at Shizuoka University and an expert on casino issues, online casinos can be accessed 24 hours a day from home or elsewhere. Besides slot machines and roulette, those looking to gamble can also find Japanese-language sports betting sites for professional baseball and for J.League soccer, and sites’ earnings in the Japanese market are growing rapidly.

The NPA reported that 107 people made use of illegal online casinos last year. Of these, 32 bet via a smartphone or other personal device, up sharply from only one person in 2022. However, it is difficult to detect individual gamblers, and the 32 are believed to be only the tip of the iceberg.

The agency will soon investigate operators of online casinos targeting Japanese people, the locations of the operators, how money is transferred, and the number of visits to sites from Japan. It will also conduct a survey of more than 7,000 people in Japan, from teenagers to those in their 70s, and compile a report on online casino use by the end of the fiscal year.

A company president and others arrested by the Osaka prefectural police in June, for allegedly violating the organized crimes punishment law, are suspected of laundering casino bets placed online through illegally opened accounts.

According to the Tokyo-based Society Concerned about the Gambling Addition, online casinos accounted for 20.3% of consultations with the society in 2023, up from 4.3% in 2019. Many young people in their 20s and 30s have become addicted to online casinos and are heavily in debt, leading them to take part in organized fraud or take up “dark part-time jobs” such as buying and selling bank accounts.

Some countries such as those in Europe have begun blocking connections to illegal casino sites. An NPA official said, “We will collect basic data to understand the situation as soon as possible and come up with countermeasures.”