Photo/Illutration Kiyoto Imamura is driven to the Shibuya Police Station in Tokyo after being deported from the Philippines in February. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

A ringleader in a Japanese scam group based in the Philippines was arrested on suspicion of robbery in connection with a heist at a Kyoto clock store in 2022, Tokyo police said June 29.

Kiyoto Imamura, 39, has already been indicted on four charges of running a special fraud scam to steal money and other valuables after being deported from the Philippines in February.

This is the first robbery arrest of any of the leaders of the fraud group, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.

The scammers are believed to have sent out email orders using the name “Luffy” to people in Japan tasked with carrying out the actual crimes. Luffy is a character of the popular pirate manga “One Piece.”

The group amassed about 6 billion yen ($41.5 million) through various scams carried out in Japan between November 2018 and June 2020, police said.

The latest arrest stems from a string of robberies perpetrated around Japan between May 2022 and January.

A joint investigative team was set up on June 14 to look into the robberies. It consists of officers from the MPD and Kyoto, Yamaguchi, Hiroshima and Chiba prefectures.

According to investigative sources, Imamura is suspected of conspiring with three people between 20 and 50 who were recruited through social media.

Those three have been indicted on robbery charges. They are suspected of using a hammer to threaten an employee of the Kyoto clock store at 3:15 p.m. on May 2, 2022, and making off with 41 expensive watches worth a total of about 69 million yen.

Yuki Miyazawa, 22, has been indicted on charges of transporting stolen goods. He is believed to have taken 11 of the stolen watches from Gifu Prefecture to Tokyo, where he handed them to people in charge of reselling the merchandise.

Miyazawa has also been indicted over the transfer of about 1 million yen received for the stolen watches to Imamura’s account between May 11 and 13, 2022.

Miyazawa has told police that he received instructions over social media from an individual calling himself Luffy who was based in the Philippines, the sources said.

Others suspected in similar crimes had received emails on their smartphones that came from someone called Luffy, the source said.

(This article was written by Yuji Masuyama, Minami Endo and Shomei Nagatsuma.)

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