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Crime Series of brutal burglaries rocking Kanto

thomas

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Desperate times: a series of home burglaries in the Kanto area and elsewhere have alarmed the police and the population. The perpetrators are recruited via social media (the media mentioned Instagram and Telegram) and paid up to 1m JPY per hit. Last Thursday, a 90-year-old lady in Komae (our neighbourhood, basically) was battered to death. She was found with open fractures, broken kneecaps and shoeprints all over her body.

Police believe Oshio's murder may have been carried out by the same gang that has been responsible for at least 10 house robberies and jewelry store thefts in several prefectures in the Kanto region, as well as Hiroshima and Yamaguchi prefectures since November.

Earlier on Thursday afternoon, police in Chofu, Tokyo, received a call from Chiba police, saying that a message on the smartphone of a man arrested on Jan 12 for a robbery in Oamishirasato, Chiba Prefecture, indicated that Oshio's house was being targeted for a job. The smartphone belonged to a Self-Defense Force member in his 20s from Mie Prefecture . NHK reported Sunday that gang members are believed to have been recruited on an Instagram site. The mobile phone of Rikuto Nagata, 21, who was arrested for a Nakano house robbery in which six men stole 30 million yen, also listed several addresses in Adachi Ward, including one residence which was robbed. Another message contained the words "Komae City" with a comment, "I will contact you once there is an opening."

The burglar from Ishikawa, who was arrested in Chiba, stated that the gang members had never met before the heist and had no information about who the ringleaders were.

Police said the escalating series of robberies are becoming more violent. At first, elderly victims in their homes were bound but in the most recent cases, victims have been beaten with hammers and other blunt objects to force them to hand over cash and items of value.



 
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I do appreciate the spelling corrector but not so much the auto correct , LOL.
 
Police arrested eight people in connection with an October robbery in the suburban Tokyo city of Inagi, as officers attempt to track down the "Luffy" ringleader suspected to be behind a spate of burglaries across the country. The telephone number linked to Luffy suggests the person is in the Philippines.

In the Inagi case, the police believe the suspects colluded in forcefully entering a residence, injuring a resident and stealing gold bullion and other valuables and some 35 million yen ($271,000) in cash. One of the eight has been released pending a decision. [...] According to the police, the majority of those arrested appear to have been recruited online. One suspect has reportedly told officers that he "told them about me and my family, and I couldn't get out of it because I was afraid my family would be hurt." Some of the eight are linked to other incidents believed to have been the group's work, with three of them previously indicted for an attempted robbery in Iwakuni, Yamaguchi Prefecture, in November last year. Two are suspected to have been involved in an attempted murder and robbery in Hiroshima and a robbery causing injury in Tokyo's Nakano Ward, both in December.


 
"Luffy", the suspected mastermind and three others believed to be behind a string of robberies and now in detention in the Philippines, appear to be senior members of a fraud group of which 36 members were arrested in 2019. While detained, Luffy seems to have directed the operations via the Telegram app.


Police have requested the transfer of the four men to Japan from Manila after obtaining arrest warrants on suspicion of theft in relation to the fraud, which targeted elderly people in Japan. The suspects named in the arrest warrants include Yuki Watanabe and Kiyoto Imamura. The four are believed to be behind a spate of robberies starting last year that used similar tactics to the fraud operation, including offering large payouts to individuals recruited to stage the crimes. In November 2019, authorities in the Philippines detained 36 Japanese men in connection with the fraud group, which used a hotel in Manila as its base to make calls to targets in Japan. All the men were returned to Japan between 2020 and 2021 and arrested for theft.



Luffy is expected to be deported after Philippine law enforcement authorities complete their investigations into crimes they say he committed on their home turf.

He surfaced on Japanese police radar following a series of arrests in Japan in connection with the robbery cases. Police analyzed records of phones seized from the suspects and found that a person using the name Luffy provided instructions from the Philippines of locations to hit. One puzzling aspect of the case is that he was being held at an immigration detention centre when some crimes were committed. "Luffy" is a character in " One Piece ", a popular manga series."



This is a sensitive topic for homeowners. Secom and the home security industry will pop the champagne. I am not sure if this is related, but two of our neighbours installed additional motion sensor lights last week, covering our house. Thank you. :)
 
"Luffy", aka Yuki Watanabe and three other Japanese who were arrested in Manila and believed to be behind a string of robberies across Japan will likely be deported to Japan next week. Watanabe, allegedly one of the leaders of the fraud group, stole about 3.5 billion JPY (USD 27m) in around 2,300 cases between November 2018 and June 2020.

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The Japanese police have been requesting the transfer of the suspects from Manila, where they are being detained. The Philippine justice minister has expressed hope to "solve the problem" by Monday, ahead of the planned visit to Japan by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. starting Wednesday. Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla has also told reporters that the Philippines is seeking to deport all four suspects together. The four likely include a person or persons thought to have masterminded the robberies under the names "Luffy" and "Kim." They are suspected of organizing a series of robberies in Japan that began last year, remotely coordinating the operation from the immigration facility using an encrypted messaging app. Japan has sought their transfer after police obtained arrest warrants on suspicion of theft in connection with a scam targeting elderly people in Japan. Among the four, Yuki Watanabe was allegedly one of the leaders of the fraud group, which stole about 3.5 billion yen ($27 million) in around 2,300 cases between November 2018 and June 2020, according to police.


 
A little update on the Luffy burglar gang: this week, all four Japanese perpetrators who had already been detained in the Philippines have been extradited to Japan.

Authorities say they targeted the elderly and stole or cheated their victims of billions of yen. From their jail in the Philippines, the men managed to recruit accomplices in Japan to carry out the robberies. One of them is said to be the mastermind, who calls himself "Luffy" after a popular anime character. Philippine authorities deported two of them, Kiyoto Imamura and Toshiya Fujita, to Japan earlier this week. The other two - Yuki Watanabe and Tomonobu Kojima - arrived in Japan on Wednesday night.




In total, fifty thefts and robberies since 2021 have been tied to the Luffy group.


Around 50 robberies, thefts and other crimes in 14 prefectures since the summer of 2021 have been linked to the group that carried out the recent "Luffy" burglaries, investigative sources said. Police across Japan have arrested about 60 people in connection with these incidents. The suspects in the recent burglaries are believed to have received instructions via mobile phone from people in the Philippines using names such as "Luffy" and "Kim." One of the robberies occurred at a house in Komae, western Tokyo, last month, where an elderly woman was found beaten to death. Police have detained multiple suspects in that robbery-murder case as part of an investigation of another incident, the sources said. The four supposed leaders of the robberies have all been deported from the Philippines. They were arrested by Tokyo police in a separate fraud investigation.



In the national news, the four extradited gang members received a lot of media attention. Mainichi had a piece about one of them, Watanabe Yuki, 38, and his criminal career:

 
Wow, imagine victimizing the elderly like that and calling yourself Luffy... That's real Doflamingo energy. Luffy would be kicking his *** up and down the archipelago.

60 people arrested... Greed is a virus
 
Next time they need to pick a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with Japan.

Who/what is the real Luffy?
 
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