Tokyo police said Thursday that a counterfeiting ring has apparently forged about 4 billion yen in expressway tickets and that many of them have already been sold to transport companies.
The Metropolitan Police Department believes the group has forged some 4.8 million tickets for highways, including the Metropolitan Expressway and the Chuo Expressway, as well as for the Outer Tokyo Ring Road.
It is likely that about 3.5 million of the tickets have already been sold, but the rest have been confiscated, police said. Some of the tickets may be in the possession of mobsters, they said.
Police arrested gangster Noboru Sudo, 40, and several other people from July to September on suspicion of using forged Chuo Expressway tickets.
In addition, a former printing company president and several others have recently been arrested on suspicion of forging tens of thousand of tickets, they said.