Tokyo police have arrested a 36-year-old woman they say drained an older man of 13.5 million yen, then spent it at host clubs.
Yoshiko Takamatsu met a man in his 60s on a dating app last year. From there, investigators say, the story got darker and more specific. She told him her father had cancer and needed surgery. She kept coming back with updates about her family’s health. None of it checked out. Police say nobody in her family was actually in the hospital.
The cash still moved. Over time she allegedly took 13.5 million yen from him under the cover of medical bills.
When officers arrested her, she didn’t bother with a denial. “I scammed him so I could use the money at host clubs,” she told them.
That confession is how she picked up the nickname. Investigators started calling her “Itadaki Yoshiko,” a twist on itadaki-joshi — the sugar-baby grifter who works older men for money. In her case, the pitch wasn’t romance. It was a dying parent who didn’t exist.
Host-club debt stories in Japan usually run the other direction: women already deep in the red, then pushed into worse choices to keep the tabs open. This one skips the slow slide. Police say she built the lie, collected the money, and walked it straight into the clubs.
She’s admitted the allegations. The 13.5 million yen is not coming back with an apology.