A pair of men who apparently met two weeks ago on the Internet were arrested Sunday for stealing 500,000 yen from a coffee shop in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, after threatening an employee with a knife, police said Sunday.

Satoshi Akamine, 28, and Isao Uehara, 27, both unemployed local men, apparently met online and did not even know each other's real names, the police said.

Uehara, from Nishihara Town, posted a message on a Web site that is accessible via mobile phones, saying he sought a partner for whom he "would do anything, even murder," the police said. Akamine, from the nearby village of Tomigusuku, saw the message in early April and contacted Uehara by e-mail, telling him to meet him in Naha, the prefecture's capital, the police said.

Upon meeting, the two agreed immediately to commit the robbery, they said. On Saturday morning, the pair went to the coffee shop in Ginowan, and after checking out the place, they forced an employee into a washroom stall by threatening him with a knife, the police said. They then made off with around 500,000 yen in cash, they said.

Police said they were tipped off by a witness who saw the two men leave the crime scene in a getaway vehicle. They arrested Akamine on Saturday, and Uehara on Sunday. Uehara and Akamine are both several million yen in debt, and the police believe they committed the robbery in order to be able to pay off their debts.

The two apparently called each other by their online nicknames, one of which was "binbonin," or poor man, according to the police.