Japanese police on Friday arrested 15 suspects transported from Bangkok in connection with a large-scale phone scam, to which hundreds of people are believed to have fallen victim.
The 15 Japanese men in their 20s to 50s are suspected of having called people across Japan from a rented luxury house in the Thai beach resort of Pattaya, claiming they had failed to pay subscription fees for a website and swindling more than 200 people out of over 200 million yen ($1.83 million) in total.
Three of the suspects have been identified as Yasutaka Toyama, 54, Ryu Iwamoto, 23, and Seiji Ikehara, 33.
Tokyo police have found that 70 million yen was fraudulently obtained by the group in at least 80 cases between January and March, they said.
Japanese investigators entered Thailand on Wednesday to receive custody of the suspects from Thai authorities for their transfer.
Thai police arrested the 15 men in March on suspicion of working illegally in the country and seized some 50 IP phones, as well as a scammer's handbook on specific procedures to trick people, in a search of the house.
Kyodo News
