#4 – Yamaguchi-gumi

Founded in 1915 by Harukichi Yamaguchi in Kobe; it is currently by far the largest Yakuza with over 55,000 members. Kenichi Shinoda was arrested on December 4, 2005 for gun possession and released on April 9, 2011

This advanced criminal organization officially forbid their members from selling drugs.

Instead of wasting time charging very small amounts of cash for protection to small business owners like other criminal groups have always done, they only extort money from publicly traded companies with a form of specialised racketeer unique to Japan called Sōkaiya.

Individuals acquire enough stock in order to gain entrance to a shareholder’s meeting. They disrupt the meeting until their demands are met. They also print fake newspapers and they ask the companies to buy all of them.