Police have arrested a 17-year-old boy for allegedly stealing IDs and passwords of people attempting to buy his fictitious online game account by guiding them to a fraudulent website.
The corporate worker in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, allegedly accessed a website trading game accounts using another boy's ID and password he stole through a bogus website in December last year and sent points worth some ¥9,000 to his own account.
The Metropolitan Police Department suspects that he obtained funds worth a total of about ¥4 million between autumn 2022 and December last year by repeating the same scheme over 100 times, people familiar with the investigation said.
The 17-year-old compromised other people's accounts using their IDs and passwords and sent their funds to his own account. The funds were used for an online casino and other purposes after being exchanged for crypto assets.
He looked up information on the internet about how to steal IDs and passwords by planting a computer virus on a website.
In May this year, he was arrested on suspicion of installing a virus on a fraudulent website.
The practice of trading online gaming accounts is known as real money trade. Although some games ban the practice, it remains popular among players seeking to gain an advantage with stronger characters and items.