FUKUOKA - Two Chinese men have been arrested on suspicion of remotely controlling a man's smartphone via a malicious app and using a payment service to fraudulently obtain trading cards, Japanese police said.
A series of similar incidents have been reported across Japan since August, and the arrest marks the first of its kind nationwide, according to the police.
The joint investigation team involving the Fukuoka, Hokkaido, and Hyogo prefectural police forces arrested the two men -- an unemployed 31-year-old from Osaka and a 33-year-old, who claims to be an electric vehicle repairman and whose address is unknown.
The two men allegedly conspired in September with one other person, believed to be the ringleader, to remotely control the smartphone of a man in his 60s from Hyogo Prefecture, who had been tricked into downloading a malicious app, and used an electronic payment service to fraudulently obtain five trading cards worth about 570,000 yen ($3,600) from a toy store in Fukuoka.
They are suspected of having scanned a QR code for the payment of the trading cards at the store and sent it to the ringleader who then processed the payment remotely using the downloaded app.
The two men admitted to fraudulently obtaining the trading cards but denied remotely controlling the victim's device.
They were also arrested on two similar fraud charges for using a smartphone payment service.
According to the Fukuoka prefectural police, there had been approximately 1,600 reports of similar incidents nationwide by the end of September.
