Immigration, Partnership, and Scam Litigation Cases

A 2021 Tokyo High Court precedent involved challenging an immigration decision in court on constitutional grounds; the chat did not go into further detail. A visa was denied at the Yokohama immigration office with the reasoning "your salary is too high, Japanese people don't earn that much" (the salary was 5 million yen), even though the same document package was approved without issue at the Tokyo office — illustrating how subjective individual immigration officers' decisions can be, according to a 20-year veteran entrepreneur. In another case, a visa application was rejected because a lawyer failed to attach a scan of a land sale contract as proof of the source of funds for capital; the documents were returned for resubmission, but by then stricter rules applied — 30 million yen in required capital instead of the previous 5 million. On partnership disputes: a partner who contributed the initial capital ($10,000 plus the first three clients) ten years ago is no longer involved in operations but still receives 50% of profits (about $250,000 a year) and began using company staff for free for his other business. Options discussed included reducing dividends and starting to pay the CEO an official salary — seen by most as the most reasonable approach — versus "squeezing out" the partner, seen as unethical and reputationally risky. The consensus: buyback rights, non-compete/non-solicit clauses, and a method for determining "fair value" of a stake need to be set at the start of a partnership, since agreeing on them after the fact is very hard. In a related case, one participant negotiated with a co-founder to receive 100% of voting rights in exchange for enshrining in the articles of incorporation the co-founder's right to a guaranteed buyout of their stake — both sides considered it a win-win, and it also strengthened the BM-visa case by simplifying management in the eyes of immigration. Separately, a Hong Kong corporate service forwarded a letter, purportedly from government "authorities," demanding a fine (50,000 HKD, discounted to 20,000 if paid immediately) — a classic intimidation scheme using an officially formatted letter (half in Chinese, half in English, with a QR code for credibility); the company disputed the fine and it was canceled, since the fault lay with the corporate service, not the client. A similar scheme, via an official-looking letter from the tax office, reached another chat participant in Japan; the recommendation is to independently verify all official letters and, when in doubt, document the entire process with screenshots or photos. Other reported scams: an official "external" company email listed on the website received a message about that email being registered on Instagram with a confirmation code — the advice is not to open such emails, to inspect the source code and links without clicking them, and to use separate emails for each registration purpose (website, Instagram, support, government forms) to limit risk and spam. An investment firm presenting with "flawless English" and video calls but an email domain that did not match its official domain turned out, on verification, to be a false alarm (the domain did match) — still, participants urge caution with "investors." A tracker of troubled founders and scam stories in the startup industry (mostly YC-backed startups) is at https://ycombinator.fyi; participants note that many cases there are ordinary business failures rather than actual scams, and the site's author may be biased. Finally, a scandal involving eight local-assembly members of the Sanseito party used sham leadership roles in NPOs to understate official income and minimize National Health Insurance contributions — cited by participants as a striking example that even self-styled "tax justice" advocates use gray schemes. Source: https://ycombinator.fyi — Tracker of troubled founders and scam stories in the startup industry.