Around 30 arrested over spate of robberies in Kanto region

Japanese police said they have made about 30 arrests as of Friday in connection with a spate of robberies and other incidents in and around Tokyo, with the suspects believed to have been recruited and instructed to carry out their alleged crimes via social media.

The police forces of Tokyo and Chiba, Saitama and Kanagawa prefectures set up a joint investigation headquarters on the same day in response to the robberies, which have targeted private homes and employed similar tactics since August.

In several of the 14 cases under investigation, the same account names on a messaging app were used to give instructions to the perpetrators, investigative sources said.

Hiroharu Goto, 75, was found dead Wednesday with his hands and legs tied at his home in Yokohama and signs of having been beaten, according to the Kanagawa prefectural police. His house was ransacked and around 200,000 yen had been stolen, they said.

On Thursday, a home in Ichikawa, Chiba, was vandalized, and a resident in her 50s went missing. She was found later that day at an accommodation facility in Saitama Prefecture where police arrested Shu Fujii on the spot for allegedly confining her. Money was missing from a purse left at the house.

Another man has turned himself in to the Kanagawa police, hinting at his involvement in the Ichikawa case. Police, meanwhile, found Fujii's fingerprints in Goto's house in Yokohama, the sources said.

Messaging app account names such as "Natsume Soseki," a famed Japanese novelist, "Akanishi," and "Jojo" have been used in some of the robbery cases to contact perpetrators, who used similar tactics to break into homes and steal cash, the sources said.

Also on Friday, police arrested a 25-year-old man in Sapporo on Japan's northern island prefecture of Hokkaido, after he allegedly broke into a house, tied up its occupant with adhesive tape and attempted to steal money.

Police authorities are carefully investigating whether the incidents in each area are related, the sources said.

Last year, four crime ringleaders were indicted for orchestrating from the Philippines via a messaging app a series of robberies in Japan, after a total of over 50 crimes occurred across 14 prefectures since 2021. Perpetrators were individuals enticed via social media with promises of lucrative "part-time jobs."

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