FUNNY OLD WORLD
fow@private-eye.co.uk
£ “He was quite clever,” a police spokesperson observed to reporters in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, “I have to admit that. He was diligent for opening so many accounts, and manipulating the delivery platform to exploit loopholes, enabling him to obtain over 1,000 free meals via the food delivery app Demae-can before his arrest. The platform’s refund policies clearly need improvement, they are too lenient with customers.”
After his arrest, 38-year-old Takuya Higashimoto told police, “I had been unemployed for several years, but wanted to eat expensive items like eel bento and hamburger steaks. At first I just tried a trick, then it became compulsive and I couldn’t stop reaping the rewards of my fraud. That first time, once the order was delivered, I used the app’s chat feature to claim it hadn’t arrived, and received a refund of 16,000 yen [£79] the same day. Eventually, I was operating 124 accounts on Demae-can, using fake names that were registered with the wrong addresses to evade detection. I used the accounts with prepaid mobile phone cards with false credentials, and quickly cancelled them.”