TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police have arrested three members of a fraud ring that operated from a vehicle with tinted windows, reports the Sankei Shimbun (June 16).
According to police, two of the three suspects are Kazuyoshi Matsumoto, 31, and Ryuya Koyama, 32, both of no known occupation.
In April, the suspects allegedly worked together to swindle a woman in her 80s and living in Chiba Prefecture out of at least one bank card.
“Your card needs to be renewed to collect a refund for overpaid insurance,” the woman was falsely told over the telephone before a member of the ring arrived at her residence to collect the card.
The card was then used to withdraw about 860,000 yen in cash from her account using an ATM machine, police said.
Both Matsumoto and Koyama deny the allegations, police said. “I don’t know anything about this,” one of the suspects was quoted.
In making the telephone calls, the suspects operated from a vehicle parked in a parking lot for a home center. The vehicle’s glass was tinted so that it was difficult to see in from the outside, police said.
Over the first five months of the year, the suspects are believed to have swindled dozens of persons out of around 20 million yen.
