Kyoto prefectural police rearrested a 28-year-old video streamer on suspicion of attempted extortion on Wednesday, alleging he threatened to post videos attacking a man and demanded ¥3 billion in cash. The man, Minoki Ikeda, lives in Nakano Ward, Tokyo, and works in video distribution, police said.
Ikeda is known as the YouTuber "KENZO Shinjuku 109," according to investigators. He has declined to speak, telling police he will "remain silent," the Sakyo police station said.
The rearrest concerns May 18 and 19 last year, when he is suspected of threatening to publish videos interrogating the man and demanding the money. Police believe he conspired with two others, including Makoto Akagi, a 46-year-old unemployed man from Okayama, who was arrested on the same suspicion in October.
Earlier arrest over defamation
Ikeda was arrested earlier on suspicion of defamation over videos said to have been posted about a man who was then 36 and a former representative director of a real estate company. The extortion investigation grew out of that case.
The case follows a pattern in which streamers use videos attacking named individuals as leverage for money, a form of harassment that can reach foreign residents as well as Japanese targets. Police have not said how the earlier videos were produced or how the demand was made.