Two men have been arrested for scamming thousands of dollars worth of purchase reward points out of a popular internet shopping site by booking tens of thousands of hotel rooms, Japanese police announce on Dec. 7th.
The two men, identified as Ken Muranaka and Kensaku Ohara, are believed to have reserved as many as 28,000 rooms at 1,600 hotels nationwide through the travel page of the popular shopping website Rakuten.co.jp under multiple IDs starting in February of this year, Seikei News reported.
Many Japanese websites do not require credit cards to make purchases or reservations in country. By booking and not canceling the rooms, the pair generated a significant amount of reward points on the Rakuten site.
Ohara admitted, “We earned hundreds of thousands of yen worth of points every week with the fake reservations,” the Yomiuri reported. The two men were able to redeem the points back for items such as video games, CDs, books, and even hotel rooms.
The suspects are both reported to be currently unemployed and without permanent address. They carried out their scheme on their cell phones and at internet cafes.
The two men were finally arrested on Dec. 5th under the official charges of obstruction of business.
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