A Japanese woman was arrested by police after she rented cameras worth tens of millions of won from a South Korean camera rental shop using her passport, which was declared lost, as collateral and didn’t return them.
The Incheon Police Department Airport Police Unit stated on April 18 that it had detained a female suspect, a Japanese national in her 30s, on suspicion of fraud.
The woman is suspected of renting cameras and other equipment from a camera rental shop in Seoul on April 9 and attempting to leave the country for Japan on April 11 without returning them.
The suspect was arrested at the airport after a report from the owner of the shop thought it’s strange that the GPS signal on the cameras were detected at the airport.
As a result of the investigation, it was found that the suspect had already rented cameras and lenses worth a total of 40.8 million won at market value from Korean camera rental shops on three occassions since January, and that the cameras she rented twice before had been sold in Japan.
The suspect was aware of the fact that she needed a passport during the rental process, and had been issued a new passport in advance through a lost passport declaration, and offered her previous one, which had been processed as lost, as collateral when she rented the cameras.
Police officials are urging people to be careful to avoid similar scenarios, as the rental of expensive electronic products is a scheme.
