Kyoto police have arrested a 17-year-old high school student from Kanagawa Prefecture on suspicion of illegally obtaining information from credit cards belonging to other individuals.
The suspect, a second-year male student from the city of Isehara, has admitted to the allegations.
Police arrested the student on Tuesday on suspicion of creating a program that purported to verify the validity of credit cards and using it to illegally obtain information from six credit cards between July 26 and Aug. 11 last year.
He is also accused of providing stolen credentials to a third party on May 20 the same year.
Investigators said the student was part of a Telegram chat group whose members exchanged stolen credit card information and techniques to obtain such information. He uploaded his own program to the chat, which allowed participants to input the details of approximately 7,000 credit cards they had collected.
The group had roughly 100 members, two of whom were arrested last year for allegedly using stolen credit card details from the chat to purchase luxury watches.
The scheme was uncovered through a cyber patrol operation by Kyoto police.
Meanwhile, Gifu police on the same day arrested a 16-year-old part-time worker with no fixed address for allegedly using illegally obtained credit card information to make payments. He was also a member of the same group but it has not yet been disclosed whether he has admitted to the allegations.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.