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Chiba cops nab yakuza in nationwide ATM heist

Ryusei Fukuda
Ryusei Fukuda

CHIBA (TR) – Chiba Prefectural Police on Wednesday arrested an organized crime member in the quick-strike theft of nearly two billion yen from ATMs nationwide earlier this year, reports NHK (Aug. 3).

Police arrested Ryusei Fukuda, a 49-year-old member of the Yamaguchi-gumi, and three other persons for allegedly using forged credit cards to withdraw 3.8 million yen from five ATMs at convenience stores in Ichihara City between 6:45 a.m. and 7:55 a.m. on May 15.

The suspects are a part of a gang of thieves that used similarly forged credit cards with data leaked from a bank in South Africa to steal approximately 1.86 billion yen from ATMs nationwide in 2.5 hours.

The gang targeted more than 1,400 ATMs in convenience stores in 17 administrative districts, including Tokyo and the prefectures of Kanagawa, Aichi, Osaka and Fukuoka.

In Chiba, the thieves targeted a total of about 160 convenience store ATMs with the losses totaling around 200 million yen.