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
I wonder if it still would be considered a crime had they used their proper identification for every reservation?
It'd seem that intentionally using multiple (presumably fake) IDs to get around any system limits would be the criminal act, not making the reservations.
subieaggie said: You get points for JUST making the reservations instead of having to actually pay and stay? I thought the Japanese were supposed to be smart.
Their economy has been in the crapper for the last 20 years. 1% average annualized returns on the Nikkea over 20 years.
subieaggie said: You get points for JUST making the reservations instead of having to actually pay and stay? I thought the Japanese were supposed to be smart.
They didn't cancel, they just no-showed. I think what happened is that the system lacked a check to see that payment was actually received.
Xnarg
Senior Member - 5K
posted: Dec. 8, 2009 @ 11:36a
"Why can't the US be more like Japan?"
glxpass
Senior Member - 5K
posted: Dec. 8, 2009 @ 11:36a
I don't know about the hotel reservation site, but there definitely obstruction of business at the hotel level as described below. Perhaps that also has some bearing on the case.
I think the "obstruction of business" issue is just that and is the core issue. If making this huge number of reservations was determined to be fraudulent, and it interfered with people trying to make legitimate reservations to the extent that the hotel companies were adversely affected, then "obstruction of business" would seem to apply.
It's one thing for someone to make a reservation and not show up, but the volume at which this was done makes it obvious that these were never legitimate reservations in the first place. Even if the pair had given their correct identity, it still would probably be classified as fraudulent. Whether this was done to garner reward points or to directly harm the business seems secondary; the primary facts are that reservations were made in huge quantities that were clearly not meant to be used and this interfered with the ability of the hotels to conduct business with legitimate customers.
So given a law against obstruction of business, this activity seems to fit, regardless of the pair's motives and correct indentity information.
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