A high ranking member of the Japanese criminal syndicate "Luffy" group was arrested by Philippine authorities in a law enforcement operation in Makati City on Tuesday, the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) reported on Thursday.

In a press conference, PAOCC Executive Director Undersecretary Benjamin Acorda Jr. identified the arrested member as Hideharu Inoue.

Inoue, who was also identified as a senior member and manager of the Luffy group, was arrested in Washington Street, corner Dela Rosa Street in Makati City on June 23.

"The Luffy group has been linked to a large-scale fraud operation across countries using deception, impersonation and organized criminal methods to victimize innocent people," said Acorda.

PAOCC said "the group carries out a sophisticated scam by having its members impersonate government officials, including police officers and personnel from Japan's Ministry of Finance, to gain the trust of potential victims."

"After gaining the victims' trust, the group deceives them into allowing access to their homes under the pretext of official business or investigation. Once inside, the suspects distract the victims and secretly replace their legitimate ATM cards with counterfeit ones concealed in envelopes, which are then used to illegally access and withdraw funds from the victims bank accounts," it added.

Lt Col. Mark Joy Batuyong of the Philippine National Police (PNP) Intelligence Group said Inoue became a member of the notorious Luffy group when he arrived in the Philippines in 2019.

"His membership is back in 2019, after arriving in the Philippines in June 2019 he became immediately a member of Luffy group," he said.

Batuyong also mentioned that the majority of the Luffy group members were already arrested and only few other members remain at large.

"Of course, we are continuously pursuing the operation against them," he said.

After the press conference, Inoue and another Korean fugitive were officially turned over to the Bureau of Immigration.

BI spokesperson Dana Sandoval explained that Inoue was staying in the Philippines several years before his deportation case was issued in 2023.

The Tokyo Summary Court in Japan issued an arrest warrant for Inoue on charges of theft, prompting the Bureau of Immigration (BI) to issue Warrant of Deportation Order No. 2023-02/17-88 dated March 28, 2023.

"They have been here several years already prior to the release of the cases against them, that is usually the modus of these fugitives. If they know that there will be cases that are going to file against them they flee their country to hide," she said.

Sandoval noted that as a fugitive in justice Inoue is tagged as an undesirable alien and will be deported back to Japan.

"Once everything is clear they have their travel documents and there are no pending local cases here in the Philippines then we can implement the deportation," she said.

"In our immigration law we automatically tag a foreign national as an undesirable alien once we get information from our foreign counterpart that he is a fugitive so the deportation order against him was already issued. With the deportation order also comes blacklisting so once he is deported he will not be allowed to return to the Philippines," she added. Robina Asido/PHS