Police on Tuesday sent to prosecutors the case of a 53-year-old man from Aichi Prefecture who was arrested Monday on suspicion of killing a friend in a truck accident to fake his own death and collect insurance money, police said.
Kiyoshi Hasegawa, president of a construction firm in the town of Kanie in the prefecture, confessed to killing Kazumi Ito, 52, by driving the truck, with a drunken Ito in the front passenger seat, into a container on a road near Nagoya port on June 15, police sources said.
Hasegawa, who denied the charges shortly after his arrest, allegedly killed Ito, who apparently resembled him, to fake his own death and collect about 90 million yen in life insurance by having his wife, 51, identify Ito's body as his, the sources said.
Hasegawa fled from the scene shortly after the crash and his wife identified the body found in the front seat as that of her husband, police said.
A 14-year-old boy who was also in the truck, a brother of an employee at the firm, initially told police the driver was a foreigner.
But police discovered that a call was made from Hasegawa's cellular phone to the boy's after the accident and began a search for him.
Hasegawa was arrested in Nagano Prefecture after his station wagon was found on a road near an expressway interchange in Gifu Prefecture.