A 27-year-old man was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of trying to extort 8 million yen from a leading ham-processing company by using the name of a religious group in Tokyo's Nerima Ward to which he once belonged, police said.
Yoshiaki Izumi is suspected of calling the Tokyo office of Itoham Foods Inc. on Feb. 5 and, using the name of the religious group, threatening to lace the company's products with poison unless it donated 8 million yen within two weeks to the group, the Metropolitan Police Department said.
Izumi, of Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture, reportedly told investigators he had made similar calls to some 50 food companies nationwide in the past few years, using the religious group's name each time. The name of the group was withheld. The suspect said he tried to extort money from the companies because he wanted to harass the religious group, according to police.