A woman who allegedly made 2,761 bogus emergency calls over nearly three years has been apprehended by authorities.
Niroko Hatagami, 51, of Matsudo in the Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo, was detained by Japanese police on Thursday.
She was detained on suspicion of interfering with the work of a nearby fire brigade.
Authorities claim she made the calls between August 2020 and May 2023 for at least two years and nine months using her cellphone and other devices.
She admitted to making calls from both her home and at other locations around her neighbourhood because she felt ‘lonely and wanted someone to listen […] and give me attention’, local press reported.
Over the period in which she made the false emergency claims, she’s thought to have complained to authorities of stomach aches, drug overdoses, aching legs, and other symptoms.
When local services arrived, she would apparently repeatedly refuse medical help, denying having placed any calls.
Her arrest came about after Matsudo Fire Department filed a complaint with the police on June 20.
Studies have revealed almost 1.5 million people in Japan may be suffering from acute loneliness, with levels exacerbated by the COVID-19 emergency.
Niroko’s case recalls that of Charlotte Walkinshaw, of Ramsgate, who in August 2022 was jailed for two years after making more than 30 bogus calls to emergency services.
Walkinshaw, who has 76 previous convictions, would routinely pretend to be the victim of a crime or in need of urgent medical attention.
The defence argued that Walkinshaw had suffered trauma at various points in her life, for which the judge offered ‘great sympathy’.
However, the judge nevertheless told her at sentencing: ‘You’d ring them up, tell them some nonsense and get them to spend time with you.
‘You should know at your age the emergency services are hard pressed, and I dread to think how many tens of thousands of pounds you have cost the public and how many people have been genuinely ill needing the police or fire services having to wait, with potentially catastrophic results.’