TOKYO (TR) – Law enforcement has arrested a 35-year-old executive of Natural, a massive illegal scout syndicate, after tracking him down in Osaka Prefecture following an extended manhunt, reports the Sankei Shimbun (June 11).
Yuto Enomoto, a resident of Tokyo’s Nerima Ward, was apprehended at a pachinko parlor in Osaka City on June 11 by a joint task force of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and Chiba Prefectural Police.
Enomoto, who had been on a nationwide wanted list since April, is considered the right-hand man to the syndicate’s top leader, 41-year-old Hiroaki Obata, who has already been indicted.
Enomoto is accused of violating the Employment Security Act. Between September and November of last year, he allegedly introduced a woman in her 20s to a so-called “delivery health” dispatch sex business in Takasaki City, Gunma Prefecture.
Authorities say he did so fully aware she would be required to provide sexual services to unspecified male customers.
Tokyo Metropolitan Police have not disclosed whether Enomoto has admitted to the allegations.
Authorities consider Natural to be a tokuryu syndicate, whose members give and receive orders anonymously via smartphone apps. Over the past year, police nationwide have been aggressively trying to dismantle the syndicate.
Operating as a sprawling pyramid organization with approximately 1,500 members across Japan, the group illicitly recruited and funneled women into the sex industry.
By collecting lucrative introduction fees and kickbacks from sex establishments, the syndicate is estimated to have raked in a staggering 4.5 billion yen in a single year.
