Japanese men held in Manila belong to crime syndicate running ‘Luffy’-led ring
- One of the men is the ‘number three’ man of the JP Dragon gangster syndicate
- Discovery of JP Dragon and the group led by Luffy stemmed from arrest of over 30 Japanese nationals in November 2019 for running a telecoms fraud scheme
Speaking to Kyodo News on condition of anonymity, a senior law enforcement officer who is familiar with the case said one of the men, identified as Tomohiro Koyama, is the “number three” man of the “JP Dragon” gangster syndicate, while the other one, Takayuki Kagoshima, admitted to being a member.
Koyama was one of the 10 fugitives, including an alleged ringleader Kiyoto Imamura, whom Japanese authorities requested in 2019 to be deported, the officer said. Imamura was suspected of using the pseudonym Luffy when remotely planning burglaries committed in Japan in 2022, Japanese police have said.
Koyama, 49, was arrested by Philippine police on January 24 for a local fraud case, while Kagoshima, 55, was apprehended by immigration operatives on March 4 based on a warrant for theft issued by a court in Japan’s Fukuoka Prefecture, the officer said.
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Both are presently detained at a Philippine immigration detention facility.
The syndicate’s operation is believed to have started a year before that, with a Japanese man, who has established such businesses as online gambling, cockfighting and karaoke bars in the Philippine capital, serving as its leader.
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“After several arrests, deportations and investigations in Japan, that’s [when the name] ‘JP Dragon’ syndicate came up,” the officer said, adding that based on information from Japanese authorities, investigators found out the Luffy ring has links with it.
“After the investigation in Japan, we discovered that JP Dragon is the one running” the Luffy group, the officer said. The leader of the JP Dragon, however, remains at large.
The Luffy group was believed to have coordinated the crimes in Japan from the Philippine immigration detention facility via an encrypted messaging app through which they offered high-paid jobs to people in Japan to engage in the criminal activities.
Imamura and three others have been indicted for some of the burglary cases in December following their deportation from the Philippines in February last year.
