It’s a poor definition because gift exchanges are strictly voluntary and non-reciprocal engagements. I’m not saying what he did was ok or even legal in other contexts. My only point is that I wouldn’t consider this fraud because the victims were not compelled to give. This isn’t a Nigerian prince scam where the victims were promised greater returns at a later date. These victims gave with the expectation of monetary loss.
Seems to fit the official definition pretty neatly. Colloquially, I tend to agree with you, there's a spectrum for fraud. But this still counts as fraud. It's a fraudulent misrepresentation of the truth to convince others to part with something of value (a gift).
The fact that it's a gift doesn't change that this is fraud, only the severity of fraud in a legal sense.
Fraud in the sense that the guy is lying and profiting from it, sure. But the common / google definition of a word and the legal definition/ application of that word are two completely different things.
They're technically voluntary but also socially expected. I'm not sure about birthday gifts in particular but Japan is a country where if you go on holiday somewhere you're expected to bring a gift for each of your coworkers, and people will think worse of you for not doing that. I'd be kind of surprised if omitting birthday gifts for your romantic partner without prior agreement is a real option.
It is materially different because a person with dementia can’t legally advocate for themselves so it is easier for an action against them to be considered a crime.
I do Not See the fraud here. If He would have given the Girls His real Birthday, He would have still received the Same amount of Gifts. Nothing would have changed in exchanging the Gifts.
The only Thing, which it probably helped at, was that He could plan ahead for the birthdays, avoiding a Potential meet-in of each girl, that He dated on the Same Day.
The only Thing He is gullible of ist deceiving the Woman on their Relationship. Which is Not an offenes in a legal Sense. There is no punishment for 2-timing, so 35-timing should Not have either
What’s going on with your capitalization? I spent way too much time looking for hidden messages and came away with nothing except the - entirely unrelated - hypothesis that you are German.
Not OP:
In other languages (like German) nouns are capitalized.
I often write mails inside Europe that way to make it easy readable and put focus on the stuff I find necessary.
For English native speakers it's probably really looks like hidden code ;-)
Edit: ok, read said comment and you're right. That's just like throwing a dice...
You don't have to promise anything in return for it to be fraud. If I start a Go Fund Me because I have cancer when I really don't have cancer, the people donating aren't promised anything in return. It's still fraud.
Fraud is a very complicated crime. I absolutely hate that I need to know the basic for my law degree as it fills a thousand pages of commentary literature in just one of the largest German legal commentaries because it's just that complicated.
It’s a poor definition because gift exchanges are strictly voluntary and non-reciprocal engagements. I’m not saying what he did was ok or even legal in other contexts. My only point is that I wouldn’t consider this fraud because the victims were not compelled to give. This isn’t a Nigerian prince scam where the victims were promised greater returns at a later date. These victims gave with the expectation of monetary loss.
Just because these were voluntary non-reciprocal dispositions of wealth would not automatically make this not fraud in Germany at least.
I talked with a few fellow students and their gut feeling was that this could be fraud as well. After talking a bit about the matter we had quite a few issues apart from the voluntary aspect as well.
All dispositions in fraud are voluntary for one, otherwise this would be in the ballpark of robbery and the like (as in involuntary dispositions).
The act of giving a gift is not necessarily irreversible as there are ways to fight the disposition on grounds of fraud for one. Which would tick one of the requirements of fraud: the disposition needs to be unlawful.
Anyway you're right in that there are quite a few reasons to conclude this isn't fraud. If it is, it would be a very "heavy" case which would make this a felony in Germany.
I’m no legal scholar by any means but I think in America this would be a civil suit not a criminal case unless the amount of money involved was tremendous.
I won’t even try to guess how it would shake out in Japan.