In a series of wide-area robberies, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has re-arrested three executives of a special fraud group who were arrested and charged as supervisors in the Komae City case in Tokyo, for allegedly giving instructions to the perpetrators in an attempted robbery case that occurred in Iwakuni City, Yamaguchi Prefecture last year.
The three people who were re-arrested were the leaders of the special fraud group, suspect Mahito Imamura (39), suspect Yuki Watanabe (39), and suspect Seiya Fujita (39).
According to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, the three men are suspected of attempted robbery and other crimes for conspiring with the perpetrators to break into a residence in Iwakuni City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, in November last year, threaten residents with box cutters and rob them of money and goods.
As a result of analyzing the suspects' mobile phones, they called themselves "Kim" and "Luffy" from an immigration facility in the Philippines and told the perpetrators, who had been recruited through a part-time job, "Tie them up with zip ties and take out the safe. It turned out that there was a suspicion that he had given specific instructions.
This is the seventh case in which a supervisor has been arrested in a series of wide-area robbery cases, including the case of the death of a 3-year-old woman in Komae City, Tokyo, and the Metropolitan Police Department will further clarify the chain of command and the division of roles.
The Metropolitan Police Department has not released the identities of the three men.