Scheming Criminals Like Sailor Moon, Too.

Straight from Japan, we found this news article about some scheming criminals who stole 20 billion Yen from the Japanese Government. How did they do this? By playing a few tricks with car repair billing. One pretended to be the son of a repairman of a phoney car repair business. One night with a friend went out for a few drinks with the "company car". The car was totaled in the incident, but of course the suspect couldn't pay for the damages. So, this scheme was born, and repeated over and over and over again. Even we are shocked at the amount of Yen that got away from the Government just from these faked car accidents! Police say around 10-12 people were involved, including a few students from Waseda University. The chief suspect is 29-year-old Toda Masaki, who is known as the "King" of this ring. This was carried out over three years, and when the police finally caught wind of them, they were able to find a book that the King had kept records of where the Yen had been spent. The Yen was used for multiple cell phone accounts, and was stored in just as many different bank accounts. For a criminal overlord, he was sure organized about this! The ring used the money to buy lavish luxuries such as a 13 million Yen watch, and many luxury cars. As always, nearly every story we post here has a connection to Sailor Moon, and we guess by this point you are wondering what it is. The suspects spent 10 million Yen on anime merchandice and figures, from such series as Kinnikuman and Sailor Moon. Though this story shows that scheming criminals have a soft spot for their favorite cartoon characters, we have to wonder just what figures and merchandise they bought. Perhaps they were the ones who outbid everyone by a longshot with outrageous bids on rare items?