A former employee of a Toshiba Corp. affiliate has been arrested on suspicion of swindling two clients out of 230 personal computers worth some 50 million yen, police officials said Wednesday.

Kazuya Takaai, 49, who worked at Toshiba Lifestyle Electronics Trading Co., may have fraudulently obtained as many as 30,000 personal computers worth about 6 billion yen, they said.

Takaai, a resident of Yokohama, has admitted the fraud related to the two client firms, police said.

Police said they suspect he used the money to bet on horse racing and for other entertainment, as well as to pay off debts.

According to police, Takaai obtained the 230 computers by sending the business partners false invoices on three occasions from around July to August 2002 when he was in charge of purchases at the Toshiba affiliate, which sells electronic appliances.

After the computers were delivered, he immediately sold them to a secondhand dealer in Tokyo for cash,they said.