Ishikawa prefectural police on Wednesday arrested a 25-year-old corporate employee for allegedly posting fake rescue requests on social media shortly after the Jan. 1 Noto Peninsula earthquake in central Japan.
Ryota Kanamaru, a resident of the city of Yashio, Saitama Prefecture, has admitted the allegations, saying that he wanted to get a lot of responses.
This marks the first arrest made over false information posted on social media in the aftermath of the massive earthquake that rocked the peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture on New Year's Day.
Kanamaru is suspected of posing as an individual affected by the earthquake and posting requests for help on X, formerly Twitter, at around 7 p.m. on Jan. 1, hampering rescue efforts by police and other authorities in the quake-hit areas.
He is believed to have made a dozen posts that day, claiming that his family was trapped under a collapsed house, while transcribing an address in the Ishikawa city of Wajima from a smartphone map, police sources said.
A person living outside Ishikawa who saw the X posts alerted the Wajima city government, and police officers went to the scene, but found no collapsed house or injured residents.
A cyber unit of the Kanto Regional Police Bureau identified the X account used to post the fake rescue requests, and based on the information, Ishikawa police reached the suspect. The police believe that he is responsible for other fake social media posts.
Following the 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes, a corporate employee in Kanagawa Prefecture, made a fake social media post claiming that a lion had escaped from a zoo, and was later arrested.