Tokyo police arrested a 52-year-old woman and her 33-year-old son Monday for unfairly receiving livelihood assistance funds, police said.
The arrest of the two people, whose names have been withheld, came after they were found to be acquaintances of 60-year-old Setsuko Kato, who was murdered in her Tokyo apartment last November.
Police are carefully looking into a possible connection between Kato's murder and the two welfare recipients, the police said.
According to police investigators, the two suspects violated the Livelihood Assistance Law, receiving some 11 million yen in livelihood assistance from the national government between January 1994 and April this year by being dishonest in their application for aid.
Police said the two lied when they applied to a welfare agency in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward, and said they had little or no income. The welfare agency sued the woman, a resident in Setagaya Ward, in July for fraud.
Kato was found strangled in a her apartment in Setagaya Ward on the evening of Nov. 20 last year by her 58-year-old sister, who had come by to visit.