Chinese man arrested in Japan for forging residence permits ‘may be part of bigger operation’
- Suspect began printing fakes at fraction of black market cost, leading Japanese authorities to believe high-quality reproductions were not the work of one man
A Chinese man was arrested in Japan for forging official residence cards for foreigners, Japanese News Network reported on Monday.
The 27-year-old was detained after the Immigration Bureau of Japan searched his flat in the city of Kawaguchi, Saitama prefecture, on January 11.
The officers confiscated 2,300 blank white cards which they said were used to print the permits to be sold to illegal workers from countries such as China, Indonesia and Vietnam.
Orders were placed through a social networking site, then the fake permits were mailed to customers. Each card was sold for 1,000 yen (US$9.20), the suspect was quoted as saying.
He began printing fakes in December after getting into financial trouble and had delivered 1,000 orders, the report quoted the bureau as saying.