Police arrested the wrong person before taking a woman into custody Wednesday who they said stole a bankbook and a seal from a man's apartment last month, officials said Thursday.
The officials said Eiko Watanabe, a 44-year-old bar employee, was arrested on suspicion of theft in the case and has confessed. Police initially put a woman in her 40s on a nationwide wanted list for the crime and erroneously arrested her in Shiogama, Miyagi Prefecture, on Tuesday.
The Shiogama woman vehemently denied any wrongdoing under police questioning and said she had never met the victim, a man in his 50s who resides in Tokyo's Ota Ward.
Subsequent investigations showed that the Shiogama woman was working at the time bank security cameras filmed someone withdrawing about 300,000 yen from the man's bank account. She was released Wednesday.
Police made the wrong arrest probably partly because the man mentioned the suspect's name -- Watanabe -- after reporting the theft to the Metropolitan Police Department's Omori Police Station. He told police that he had been unable to get in touch with Watanabe, whom he had been dating, since the theft.
The woman in the video footage from the bank security camera resembled Watanabe, police said.
As police looked into the theft case, they came upon the existence of the Shiogama woman, whose name at one time was identical to one used by Watanabe in the past.
The two women look so much alike that both the victim and coworkers of the wrongly arrested woman said they mistook one for the other when shown photos.