Investigators from the Kyoto Prefectural Police’s Shimogamo Precinct have cracked a counterfeiting case, nabbing their man halfway across the country. On Oct 23, Shunki Iwasaki, a 29-year-old resident of Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward, was placed under arrest and now stands to face a variety of charges. The arrest comes
Investigators from the Kyoto Prefectural Police’s Shimogamo Precinct have cracked a counterfeiting case, nabbing their man halfway across the country. On Oct 23, Shunki Iwasaki, a 29-year-old resident of Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward, was placed under arrest and now stands to face a variety of charges.
The arrest comes eight months after Iwasaki passed off the counterfeit items as the real thing something he admits to doing. However, he wasn’t dealing in illicit duplicates of classic art, paper currency, or any of the other wares often involved in counterfeiting crimes. No, Iwasaki was trying to get a quick score by selling a counterfeit Yu-Gi-Oh! card.
It wasn’t just any Yu-Gi-Oh! card, either. In mid-February, Iwasaki posted a listing on Yahoo! Auctions, one of Japan’s most popular online marketplaces, where he said he was selling a Lorelei, the Symphonic Arsenal card. Lorelei was never available in commercially sold packs of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, being instead given to winners of the 2008 Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship tournament, and investigators say there are only six genuine examples in the whole world.
