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Japanese police have arrested a sumo wrestler-turned-restaurateur for allegedly staging a sham marriage to a South Korean bar hostess 20 years his junior, officials and reports said Thursday.
Takaya Kobayashi, 49, whose ring name was Kotofuji, was detained Wednesday after notifying officials last February about his marriage to the 29-year-old Korean woman.
Kobayashi, who retired from the sumo ring in 1995, runs a beef barbecue restaurant and received 1.25 million yen in return for helping the woman obtain a permanent residency visa, Jiji Press and other media reported.
"The suspects conspired to fabricate a marriage by submitting marriage notification in February last year," a police spokesman told AFP.
Kobayashi lived in Chiba, while the Korean woman lived in downtown Tokyo, he said.
Kobayashi, who denies any wrongdoing, told police "this was a true marriage and we had planned to live together later", according to Jiji, which said that the woman had admitted the charge.
© (c) 2014 AFP
14 Comments
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titaniumdioxide
Ooopss , many I know is doing the same. Marry and get a Visa not love.
Tim_Fox
Yes, but many do marry for love, but during the paperwork the stress of setting up in a new country and international marriage can lead to marriage problems in divorce. I've heard of many many real international marriages where a divorce happens sometime during the visa application process.
Bear27840
Yes Tim_Fox however there are women looking jhust to scam a suitor with so called love/marriage just to get that visa so they can get out of their country and bring their whole family to Japan with them once they get that visa.
CrazyJoe
Gambling, match-fixing, drugs, violence and this time fake marriage? I'm having a screwdriver without the vodka.
timeon
well, in a sense this is true love. for the visa. or for the Visa.
Nichikolohe
Come on folks! It's very simple... the guy did it for the money. He was having cashflow problems and sold his "singleness" for a million yen. It's a scam that's been going on since the Korean War.
The woman gets here legal status. The guy loses a pair of old shoes and some used clothes for the masquerade in the closet but gets the money to pay his obligations - gambling, drinking, whatever! It happens everywhere...
Magnus Roe
A million yen sounds a bit low to tie yourself up legally for probably at least five years.
titaniumdioxide
Timeon, glad you saw the pun. Many marry for the Visa=money and visa=status
Mirai Hayashi
If you're gonna fake it, you've gotta at least put in the effort of making it look real
stavros69
I was offered 1 mil Yen for a fake marriage. "No Way!" was my response.
sensei258
That's no worse than the countless ojichans who marry much-younger foreign women just because they can, or the women who use those lonely guys to get their residency, and have their boyfriends on the side.
Lowly
Is marrying for a visa any worse than all those gold-diggers who marry for the mastercard?
NathalieB
Im curious as to how they found out. What made them investigate THIS marriage in particular and discover they werent living together?
When we got married (legitimately and still in love and going strong!) we had to produce a raft of documentation including pictures of ourselves, an essay of the history of our relationship, maps to our home and places of work, and witnesses to our marriage contract. I dont know if things have changed since then, but it wasnt that easy to just up and marry a foreigner.
sensei258
Maybe he owed somebody money and they didn't like his little windfall. All it would take is a phone call to the right person.