Photo/Illutration Kiyoto Imamura on Feb. 7 is escorted by police through Narita Airport after his deportation from the Philippines. (Kazushige Kobayashi)

Tokyo police arrested two fraud suspects on an airplane heading for Japan after they were deported from the Philippines on Feb. 7.

The Metropolitan Police Department executed the arrest warrants in midair against Kiyoto Imamura, 38, and Toshiya Fujita, 38. They arrived at Narita Airport on the afternoon of Feb. 7.

The MPD has also asked the Philippines to soon deport two other suspects, Yuki Watanabe, 38, and Tomonobu Kojima, 45, who are currently being held in an immigration detention center in Manila.

Police suspect the four men led a fraud group that stole more than 6 billion yen ($45 million) from victims across Japan.

The four are also connected to a spate of violent robberies, including the beating death of an elderly woman in western Tokyo, that have occurred around Japan since last year, police sources said.

Philippine authorities searched one of the fraud group’s bases in their country in November 2019 and detained 36 Japanese individuals who are believed to have made calls to defraud mainly elderly people in Japan.

More than 70 people, including those who collected money or bank cards from the victims in Japan, have been arrested in connection with the series of fraud scams.

The fraudsters, pretending to be police officers or officials of the Financial Services Agency, phoned their targets with warnings that their financial accounts were in danger, and that they should prepare their bank cards for an inspection.

Other members of the fraud group would then visit the victims’ homes and steal those bank cards.

The MPD obtained arrest warrants for Watanabe, Imamura and Kojima in July 2019, and for Fujita in February 2021.

Since then, Tokyo police have obtained arrest warrants for the four on different charges and repeated their request to the Philippines to deport the suspects to Japan.

In the robbery investigation, police believe that individuals in the Philippines who called themselves “Luffy” or “Kim” gave instructions to the burglars in Japan through a messenger app called Telegram, which offers users a high level of anonymity.

The MPD believes that the four suspects include “Luffy” and “Kim.”

Before deporting Imamura and Fujita, Philippine authorities confiscated six iPhones from one of the four suspects at the immigration detention center and handed them over to Japanese police.

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