Japanese criminals are offering well-paid jobs on Facebook and Twitter to get people to steal Pokemon cards.
The claim was made by Yuji Yoshikawa, a former detective with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department investigating drugs and juvenile crime, and was backed up this week by the arrest of a man recruited on Twitter and told to steal 1,500 rare Pokemon cards.
Clueless Masaki Omori, 35, from Japan’s southern island of Okinawa, said he responded to the Twitter add and met a man in a car park who supplied him with tools, telling him to travel to Tokyo to steal the rare cards from a card shop.
Omori was reportedly tasked with travelling to the busy Akihabara shopping area of the Japanese capital and targeting a specific store, which has not been named, to swipe the cards.
The suspect reportedly flew to Tokyo before allegedly smashing through the shop window at 5am on 12th April.
He then allegedly proceeded to steal 1,500 Pokemon cards worth JPY 1.15 million (GBP 5,600).
He was then instructed to take the cards to a park in Ibaraki outside Tokyo, where he handed them over to his contact, according to reports.
But the clueless man was told that his money would turn up a short while later and he needed to wait, but the person who was going to make the payment never turned up and he realised he had been conned.
Yoshikawa, a former detective who spent 25 years dealing with youth crime, said that there is a growing problem with teenagers responding to so-called ‘yami baito’ (‘dark’ part-time jobs) and that the rising value of the cards was making them a popular target.
It is currently unclear how he was rumbled, but after his arrest, Omori admitted he was having trouble paying living expenses and had gambling debts.
The authorities reportedly seized his smartphone in an attempt to crack down the crooks who commandeered the heist.
This theft is just one of a series that have been taking place at trading card shops, that have reportedly had to increase their security to the same level as antique shops and jewellers in order to protect against the thieves.
