Police have arrested a 35-year-old man for allegedly stealing about 1,500 Pokemon cards worth ¥1.15 million from a store in Tokyo's Akihabara district. Rare Pokemon cards are traded at high prices.
According to investigators, Masaki Omori, from Urasoe, Okinawa Prefecture, has owned up to the charges against him — stealing, breaking and entering. He told police that he responded to a Twitter post and stole the cards based on instructions from another person, in what appears to be a case of yami baito, a term that loosely translates to "dark" or "shady" part-time jobs.
After Omori responded to the Twitter post, he was offered more than a million yen but the payment did not come through. Investigators are looking for the individual who gave the orders.
Omori was arrested for allegedly breaking into the Akihabara store at 5 a.m. on April 12 and stealing the Pokemon cards. Following the instructions he was given, Omori flew from Okinawa the day before the robbery, rented a car in Ibaraki Prefecture, and received the necessary tools, including a glove from a man waiting at a retail store in the Tokyo suburbs, according to investigators. Omori is suspected of handing over the Pokemon cards, which included one worth ¥160,000, to the man at the retail store after the robbery.
Similar incidents have occurred in recent weeks. In May, about 600 Pokemon trading cards were stolen from a store in Kumamoto Prefecture, just weeks after it opened. One of the cards was worth ¥600,000.
In Yamanashi Prefecture in May, a 25-year-old man was arrested for stealing ¥2.2 million worth of Pokemon cards.
"I wanted to sell them and make money," the man was quoted as saying by the police.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.