Shoppers arrested in credit card scam
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
Secret Service agent Al Joaquin yesterday picked through Rolex and Breitling watches, Chanel bags and Christian Dior sunglasses — some $150,000 worth of new merchandise — that he said a ring of Japanese shoppers bought at high-end Waikiki and Ala Moana stores this week using fake credit cards.
The five shoppers are part of increasingly sophisticated Japanese rings that have targeted Honolulu and Guam, said Joaquin, special agent in charge of the Asia-Pacific Region Secret Service office in Honolulu.
The defendants made their first appearance in federal court yesterday after Secret Service agents arrested them Wednesday night and yesterday following a four-day shopping binge.
The youngest was 19 and the oldest was 50. All were ordered to remain in custody until a detention hearing Tuesday.
It was the second arrest of its kind this year in Honolulu and nearly identical to another ring that the Secret Service broke up in Guam last month, Joaquin said.
Four or five shoppers typically are recruited from Japanese pachinko parlors by a handler who offers each of them about $1,000 and a one-week, all-expenses paid shopping spree in Hawai'i, Joaquin said. The organizers give each shopper a list of high-end items they want from places such as Tiffany & Co. and Louis Vuitton, Joaquin said.
Although Japanese-based credit-card scams have been around for years, Joaquin said, technology has produced more realistic-looking credit cards using consumers' account numbers that might be obtained from restaurants or via the Internet.
"People think these are stolen cards," Joaquin said. "That's just not true. The (cardholders) won't even be aware of what's happened until they get their bill."
Credit-card theft creates a hassle for cardholders who then have to straighten out their accounts, Joaquin said. Either the retailer or bank that issues the card covers the loss of any merchandise, he added.
The five people arrested this week had about 40 credit cards bearing logos from Visa, MasterCard and JCB — a major Japanese bank.
The Secret Service is working with the Japanese consulate in Honolulu and with Japanese law enforcement to crack down on the organizers of the rings, who might be connected to the yakuza, or Japanese mafia, Joaquin said.
"It's a strong possibility given the relationship to the gambling parlors, the pachinko parlors," he said.
Kathy Wong, manager of the Louis Vuitton Waikiki store, said sales associates confiscated three bogus JCB cards from Japanese shoppers one week in June.
"The JCB insignia was slightly discolored and the hologram wasn't quite right," she said. "We would ask for ID and at that point, the customers left the store very quickly."
The five shoppers arrested this week began arriving in Honolulu Sunday and checked into different, lower-priced Waikiki hotels. They allegedly bought watches costing more than $10,000, complete with certificates of authenticity. Joaquin said the handler keeps the merchandise until it's time to return to Japan, where it will be resold through the organization.
On Wednesday, the manager of the Cartier store in Waikiki said one shopper tried to buy a $2,000 watch using credit cards in two different cardholders' names.
Secret Service agents searched nearby stores and arrested Masashi Endo, 50, which led to the arrests of Mitsuyuki Ono, 37; Masaki Fukazawa, 43; Tatsuya Kumagawa, 19; and Sakura Ogawa, 24.
Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.
