Police said Thursday a man who was arrested earlier has admitted to secretly installing and removing minicameras at automated teller machines.
The 37-year-old man was found carrying a device believed capable of receiving images when he was arrested Oct. 13 at a UFJ bank ATM in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward for possessing a utility knife, the police said.
Police added that he was not in possession of a camera at the time.
The man was quoted by the police as saying he had been asked to install and then remove minicameras at ATMs by a man he became acquainted with on the Internet.
Police are investigating whether he was involved in a case involving the secret installation of minicameras at UFJ ATMs.
On Tuesday, UFJ Bank said minicameras were secretly installed at more than 10 of its ATMs in the greater Tokyo area, and that some of them may have photographed customers' personal identification numbers as they were entered on the machines' screens.
According to the police and the bank, the incidents came to light when a security guard found a camera hidden in a business card-sized leaflet box in an unmanned ATM in Tokyo's Roppongi district in Minato Ward in early September.
The camera had a mechanism for transmitting and receiving images. The box was at eye level, they said.
No camera has been found at the ATMs where the 37-year-old man was arrested.