Police in Tokyo have arrested three people over a fraud case in which they allegedly chased a truck with a supercar and obtained the driver's personal information to create a credit card.
Takaaki Saito, 32, and Yuki Nomura, 30, were arrested on suspicion of buying two smartphones worth a total of ¥299,600 on July 10, 2023, with a credit card in the name of the truck driver. Saito and his wife, Chiharu, 33, allegedly committed fraud totaling about ¥99,000 in cash by returning clothes illegally purchased with another credit card.
Saito remains silent on the fraud and theft charges, informed sources said, noting that Chiharu has denied the allegations while Nomura has admitted them.
According to sources at Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department, the trio is believed to have created a total of 34 credit cards in the names of nine people using personal information they obtained through similar methods. From December 2022 to May 2024, they gained a total of about ¥40 million under the scheme.
The money is believed to have been used to repay their supercar loans and pay rent for the high-rise condominium where the Saitos live.
According to the sources, the couple from Tokyo's Toyosu Ward and Nomura from Yokohama chased trucks mainly with a supercar and stopped them, claiming that their valuable vehicle had been hit by a stone.
In Tokyo and 10 other prefectures, they called police or presented their own licenses to take pictures of the truck drivers' licenses.
They used the personal information of the truck drivers to create multiple bank accounts and credit cards and rented several rooms under the names of the drivers to receive the cards by mail.
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