OSAKA -- The Osaka District Court on Monday ordered the Honohana Sampogyo foot-reading cult and its founder to pay some 100 million yen in damages to 16 people, mainly in the Kinki region, whom the cult allegedly bilked out of millions of yen.
Judge Keisuke Hayashi handed down the sentence to the cult, based in Fuji, Shizuoka Prefecture, and its founder and former leader Hogen Fukunaga, 55.
The ruling was the second in four days to go against the cult and Fukunaga, whose real name is Teruyoshi Fukunaga. On Friday, the Akita District Court ordered Fukunaga and the cult to pay 5.5 million yen in damages to an Akita woman who claimed to have been swindled out of millions of yen in 1994.
The 16 plaintiffs said in the suit that they were pressured into paying 82 million yen after foot-readers told them they would get cancer and would not be saved without attending the group's costly "training" sessions.
The 100 million yen in damages includes compensation, lawyers for the plaintiffs said.
Fukunaga pleaded not guilty to fraud at his first criminal trial hearing Oct. 12.