Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards have remained hot ticket items for quite some time. With both of these card games arriving in the late 90s, anime fans and trading card fans have taken the opportunity to play friendly games, collect the cards, and/or compete in tournaments. Even to this day, the cards can be highly sought after items and it seems that one company’s CEO has been arrested for a scheme that involved buying quite a few cards from both anime franchises.
The crime itself allegedly saw C-Labo CEO, Nishiura Keiichiro, who had been president of the company for six years. On November 15th, Nishiura was arrested for stealing over $1.2 million USD from his company, seemingly hatching a plan that involved quite a few cards from the Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh trading card games. C-Labo is an “associate company” to a retailer known as “Animate” which specializes in all things anime. Thanks to this fact, the now-imprisoned CEO had allegedly made quite the purchase when it came to attempting to pocket the funds. Nishiura had admitted to the crimes during the company’s internal investigated, giving leeway to Japan’s government to step in.
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What Was the Pokemon Fraud Plan?
Nishiura had faked a plan for Animate to purchase a staggering forty thousand Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards, specifically from a fraudulent seller who would help the one-time CEO pocket the money. The specific law that Nishiura had broken was the “Companies Act” in Japan, though the authorities have yet to state just what the C-Labo former executive’s punishment will be.
A reporter for Friday Digital commented with regards to what happened to the stolen funds, “[Nishiura] spent it on hotels, expensive wine, traveling overseas with women, luxury cars, and paying his own rent. I think that he spent at least ¥100 million.” The company, C-Labo, also released an official statement when it came to the fraud case, “C-Labo] offers its apologies to namely our customers and trading partners, but also everyone who has relations [with C-Labo] for imposing a great burden and concern.”
What do you think of this wild fraud case involving the worlds of pocket monsters and duel monsters? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of Pokemon.
