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A 52-year-old unemployed and homeless man was arrested Aug 5 in Sagamihara City after he was caught snatching a 58-year-old woman's shopping bag, police said Tuesday, adding that the man is suspected of being involved in more than 120 cases of theft.
In the Aug 5 incident, the man was riding a motorcycle. He allegedly came up behind the woman and grabbed her bag which contained about 60,000 yen in cash. According to police, the suspect, who was caught on surveillance camera footage, was identified as Ittoku Ikehata. He was quoted as telling police: "I lost my job and no temp work was coming through, so I figured purse-snatching would be easy."
Police are now investigating Ikehata's possible involvement in up to 120 cases of petty theft in the Tokyo and Kanagawa areas, with a total combined haul of 70 million yen.
© News reports
13 Comments
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mnemosyne23
120 purse snatchings, huh? Just this one guy, eh? RIGHT. Look, if the guy was able to snatch more than $700,000 just from purse grabbing, why the heck would he still be on the streets? That's more than I'd make working at my job for 20 years!
...Maybe I need to re-think my choice of employment...
benhur
solution: Japan needs to provide more jobs!
smithinjapan
If the guy's succeeding in stealing that much from that many bags, it's kind of hard to call him 'jobless', isn't it? Sounds like he's found himself a pretty lucrative career, save that he was caught.
timeon
biglittleman, actually in Japan quite many of them chose to become homeless, there was a program on TV about it. just depressed with their sararyman life, or they were fired, or were kicked out by wife, etc. and I would ad that being lazy or doing many bad choices in life is also a matter of choice. Of course, there are many unfortunate cases as well
more details: what bike was he riding, SUzuki Hayabusa? did he have a license?
biglittleman
There are quite a few people who are homeless by choice. Either the family are d#%ks or it better to slack off living on the streets. So I am not surprise what the homeless usually have in their possession.
stirfry
yeah but you can buy a cell phone for one yen...pretty sure you can't get a motorcycle for that price
noborito
They will blame him for everything. Case closed on all of them. Even if he didn't do it. Sucker for getting caught. As for homeless with motorcycles, homeless even have Cell phones in Japan. Wonder what security camera he was caught?
stirfry
unemployed and homeless, but he has a motorcycle ?
timeon
the title is wrong, he does have a job :) so this guy is a homeless and sleeps in some park, and the police thinks he stole 70 million yen. he probably donated it to charity? note to myself: do not carry 60,000 yen in your bag.
chinpira
Got to love the police theory that this one guy is responsible for ALL the unsolved bag snatching cases in Tokyo and Kanagawa.... nice way to close off 120 unsolved cases. I'm sure they'll get a confession out of him one way or another.
biglittleman
I doubt that one person is responsible for getting over $700,000 (70,000,000 yen)from person snatching. He could retire and start a business or something. He would be set for a long time.
tamesu
"Sounds like a job candidate with excellent eye-hand coordination and motor skills."
ditto!