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Real fashion police: Con man arrested in Tokyo, police tipped off by ill-fitting suit

Master Blaster Oct 16, 2018
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Crime doesn’t pay, but looking good apparently does.

On 12 October poor dressing habits came home to roost on 49-year-old Keisuke Ogawa, who was minding his own business in the streets of Tokyo when a police officer suddenly stopped him to ask a few questions.

This sometimes happens in major cities of Japan, as police officers often stand outside police boxes keeping an eye on the area while on duty, and the officer in question later admitted that there was something suspicious about the way Ogawa’s suit didn’t fit.

Ogawa reportedly told the officer off, saying “I don’t have to tell you anything.” He then boarded a train to Kinshicho Station and there locked himself inside a toilet stall…arguably not the best escape route.

For several hours he waited in the stall, all the while refusing to comply with police requests to step out. Meanwhile, the authorities took this time to investigate who they were dealing with and confirmed that Ogawa matched the description of a man involved in the con of an elderly woman in September by a group pretending to be her son over the phone.

Using security footage of the woman’s home, police say they could identify Ogawa picking up 1.8 million yen (US$16,000) in cash and walking away. In video he is said to be wearing the very same poorly fitting suit.

Ogawa eventually came out of the bathroom, but not before breaking his phone into two pieces. He is reportedly not cooperating with police interrogations.

While still ongoing, this investigation has already been a wake-up call to several netizens about the importance of their own day-to-day appearance.

“Questioned because his suit didn’t fit, lol!”
“How badly does a suit not have to fit in order to warrant questioning?”
“I wonder if my suits fit properly…”
“That’s why I don’t wear suits.”
“I guess criminals have no sense of style.”
“Is this some kind of discrimination? Seems like it is, but I can’t tell.”

In answer to the discrimination possibility, at the time of the arrest another similar incident of fraud had recently occurred, so police were deliberately on the lookout for a man with fashion issues. However, in most places you can’t really throw a rock without hitting a guy who dresses poorly (myself included), so that alone couldn’t have been the case.

As Mr. Sato learned when he interviewed the police about his own tendency to be stopped for questioning, the suit was a giveaway, but the officer’s own instinct probably played a role as well when approaching Ogawa.

▼ Some people are just born suspicious- looking.

And in the case of Ogawa, he must have made the officer’s spidey-sense sound like a pachinko parlor. Generally a so-called con-artist is expected to be suave, but Ogawa was about as smooth-tongued as a five-year-old in a toy store. After all, when a cop asks you, “What are you doing?” there aren’t many more suspicion-arousing replies than, “I don’t have to tell you nothing!”

Either way, it probably wouldn’t hurt to make sure all your suits are fitting properly, whether going in for that job interview or trying to avoid getting hassled by the man. And with great new products like the Zozosuit it’s never been more easy to get that perfect fit and look like a pre-school cartoon character at the same time!

Source: TBS News, Nippon TV News 24, Hachima Kiko
Images: SoraNews24
[ Read in Japanese ]