Photo/Illutration Takuya Saito is suspected of orchestrating a home burglary in Chiba Prefecture in October 2024. (Photo by Sayuri Ide)

For the first time, police have arrested suspected ringleaders in a series of home invasions and robberies carried out by recruits found through social media, investigators said Dec. 5.

Hiroto Fukuchi, 26, Takuya Saito, 26, Karura Murakami, 27, and Shota Watanabe, 26, are accused of orchestrating a home invasion resulting in injury in Chiba Prefecture.

Investigators said the four men instructed three others, who have already been indicted, to break into a home in Ichikawa early on Oct. 17 last year.

A woman in her 50s at the home suffered orbital and facial fractures in the attack. The perpetrators made off with 48,000 yen ($310), a cash card and other items.

Police believe the four suspects issued real-time instructions to the assailants via nine accounts on the encrypted messaging app Signal.

The case is one of 18 robberies committed between late August and early November last year across Tokyo and the neighboring prefectures of Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa.

Many of the minions who were caught were first-time offenders with regular day jobs, investigators said, adding that they had been recruited online through shady job postings.

Some of the suspects said they committed the crimes because they feared repercussions from their anonymous but intimidating “bosses,” investigators said.

Authorities established a joint task force in October last year to investigate what they describe as “anonymous, fluid crime groups” loosely connected through social media and believed to be behind the string of robberies.

So far, 51 individuals accused of carrying out the robberies have been arrested, and investigators have been working to identify those who gave the orders.

(This article was written by Shomei Nagatsuma, Hiromichi Fujita and Shun Yoshimura.)

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