TOTTORI (Kyodo) A 35-year-old woman with links to six men whose suspicious deaths were recently uncovered in Tottori Prefecture and her 46-year-old male roommate were served fresh warrants and indicted Friday on separate counts of fraud.
The six deceased had been acquainted with or had financial troubles with the woman, who worked in a bar in the city of Tottori, and police are investigating their deaths with a view to building murder cases. Sleeping drugs were detected in autopsies of three of the six.
In the latest development, the woman and her roommate, neither of whom were identified, are suspected of conspiring to defraud a local appliance shop out of a plasma TV, a refrigerator and seven other goods worth a total of about ¥1.23 million on four occasions between Oct. 8 and 15.
The man has been charged with swindling a dealer out of a tractor and the woman with fleecing an acquaintance out of ¥1.26 million. They were arrested Nov. 2.