TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police have arrested four men on suspicion of breaking into a card shop in Ikebukuro last year and making off with 14 Pokémon cards valued at approximately nearly 30 million yen.
On New Year’s Eve, Riku Honma and three accomplices entered a card shop in Higashi-Ikebukuro, Toshima Ward while the store was open for business. The four men posed as ordinary customers before launching a violent assault on the male shop owner.
Honma then produced a hammer and smashed open a display case, police said, snatching the cards inside before the group fled. The 14 cards seized in the raid carried a combined market value of roughly 27 million yen.
Police have not disclosed whether the suspects have admitted to the allegations. Investigators are probing a possible connection to a tokuryu syndicate, a loose-knit criminal network in which participants have no prior relationship and are recruited anonymously, typically via social media.
The absence of any apparent connection among the four men has raised suspicions of tokuryu involvement, police said.
