He was drawing too much heat.

Just like every year, the past week or so has been as if someone flipped a switch from non-stop rain to relentless heat and summer is suddenly underway in Japan. They say this period of mid-rainy season heat is the worst for our health since the lingering humidity makes it harder for our bodies to properly expel the heat through sweating.

▼ The other summer months are hardly a picnic either though.

Whether that’s true or not doesn’t change the fact that the past few days have been a muggy mess in much of Japan and people are doing whatever they can to avoid heat stroke. That is, everyone except one man, apparently, who was spotted by the Saitama Prefectural Police in Kuki City on 17 June.

That morning the temperature was quickly rising but an officer patrolling the area found it odd that a man in front of Kuki Station was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and vest without even rolling up his sleeves to get a modicum of relief. Finding that suspicious, the officer decided to ask him some questions.

However, the young man refused to answer any questions and tried to walk away but the officer followed him. The man then got into a taxi, changed to a train, and got on a Shinkansen bullet train for Nagoya to get away from the officer but by this time several other members of the Saitama Prefectural Police got involved, including a helicopter that was dispatched to follow him.

Meanwhile, back at headquarters, police were checking surveillance footage to see where he had been prior to Kuki Station and cross-referenced it with other investigations. They found that he had used someone else’s bank card that he acquired illegally to withdraw 500,000 yen (US$344) from an ATM at a convenience store in Kuki City that same morning.

With that evidence in hand, an officer who was also aboard the bullet train arrested 27-year-old Sho Hara on the spot for his involvement in special fraud. Hara is denying the charges and told police, “I know nothing.”

Some readers of the news expressed amazement in comments that the officer was able to spot a criminal so well, while others took offense that wearing long sleeves in hot weather was considered suspicious behavior.

“Amazing instincts, lol!”
“They say you should wear long sleeves to keep the sun off your skin.”
“The officer has a detective’s intuition.”
“But I wear long sleeves in the summer.”
“Maybe he was hiding tattoos.”
“What kind of world do we live in where a guy can’t even wear long sleeves in the summer?”
“That cop deserves a huge bonus.”
“A nice Montbell Wickron is actually cooler than short sleeves in the sun.”
“He was probably just a bagman though. They still need to find the people behind it.”
“He probably has ‘FRAUD MULE’ tattooed on his arm.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t just the long sleeves. He was probably acting strange too.”

Indeed, it probably wasn’t just the fact that he had long sleeves but how he was wearing them. As the police taught our reporter Mr. Sato when he was questioned by them for being suspicious several times, it’s not a single behavior but a combination of them that sets off a cop’s radar. A habitual long-sleeve wearer would do so with a certain aplomb, but this guy probably looked particularly uncomfortable as he was but made no effort to change his appearance.

▼ Here’s a guy who knows how to pull off long sleeves in summer.

As we’ve seen before, police have learned to look out for people who look uncomfortable in their own clothing, as bagmen for fraud schemes are often given clothing at the last minute in order to impersonate a lawyer, police detective, CEO, etc. Sometimes these clothes are the wrong size or simply don’t match the wearer’s sensibilities, which is a guarantee that an officer will want to ask you what you’re doing.

This attention to detail and the fact that they more or less recreated the final scene of Mission: Impossible to catch this guy, show that police in Saitama are not playing around when it comes to special fraud.

Source: NTV News, Itai News
Featured image: Pakutaso
Insert images: ©SoraNews24
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