The first hearing in the trial of Yuki Watanabe, described as the "boss" who set up the overseas bases of the Luffy group, opened at the Tokyo District Court on Wednesday, with the court set to examine how the network formed and expanded.
The group, which escalated from special fraud to robbery while based abroad, shocked Japan as a forerunner of what authorities call tokuryu — anonymous, fluid crime groups. The Sankei Shimbun first reported the trial.
Four senior members have been indicted over the string of wide-area robberies on charges including robbery resulting in death and aiding robbery resulting in injury. Trials for two of them were already under way.
Those earlier hearings have begun to lay out how a fraud group that once operated inside Japan set up bases overseas, where it was harder to detect, and made its methods more sophisticated and more violent as it grew.
Bases in Thailand and the Philippines
Evidence presented by prosecutors on Wednesday showed that Watanabe established a fraud base in Thailand in 2017. He moved it to the Philippines the following year and bought the site later raided as the "West Makati Hotel."
The senior members were detained by Philippine authorities between 2019 and 2021. Even while in custody, they are said to have used the encrypted messaging app Telegram to direct the people carrying out the crimes in Japan.