Kengo, one half of the husband-and-wife YouTube channel Yumimingo TV, revealed that he was defrauded of nearly his family’s entire savings in a phone scam, and that his wife Yumitan has flatly denied any chance the ordeal would end their marriage.
In a video posted on October 17, Kengo explained that he received a call from someone claiming to be from the Hyogo Prefectural Police, who told him he was a suspect in a fraud case and needed to report in. Though suspicious at first, he eventually followed the caller’s instructions, transferring roughly 99% of the money in his bank account, canceling a time deposit, and borrowing a total of 1 million yen from consumer loan companies, all of which he handed over to the scammers.
In a follow-up video posted on October 22, Kengo and Yumitan apologized to viewers for causing concern and described what happened after they reported the crime to police. Kengo said that when officers came to take his statement, he still held out some hope the money might be recovered. Police told him that funds sent to scammers are usually moved quickly into other accounts or converted to cryptocurrency, meaning recovery is rare. “It hit me all at once,” Kengo recalled. “‘Oh, it’s really hopeless.’ That’s when the mental damage set in.”
Police later informed him that two accounts linked to the scam had been frozen. One had already been emptied out by the time it was frozen, making repayment impossible. The other still held about 20% of the amount Kengo transferred, though if other victims had also sent money to the same account, that balance would need to be divided among all of them, a process police said could take about a year and a half. Kengo also described rebuilding his bank account, reissuing his My Number ID card, and filing a police report over the incident.
Amid the fallout, Yumitan was asked whether the financial disaster might lead the couple to separate. “That’s not happening,” she said firmly, referencing an earlier promise to stand by her husband.
Who are Kengo and Yumitan?
Kengo and Yumitan are a married couple who run Yumimingo TV, a YouTube channel followed by more than 570,000 subscribers known for vlogging their everyday married life together.
Author’s Comment
Honestly, this is the part of Japan’s scam epidemic nobody talks about enough: it’s not just grandmas getting fooled by fake grandsons anymore, it’s YouTubers with half a million subscribers handing over their life savings because a stranger on the phone said the magic words "police investigation." These scams work because they’re engineered panic, not stupidity, so spare me the comments calling him gullible. What actually got me was Yumitan’s response. No ultimatums, no blame, just "that’s not happening" when asked about divorce. In a culture where financial ruin quietly ends more marriages than infidelity ever does, that’s the real headline here.
