2 Nabbed for Selling Fake Whiskey via Flea Market App in Japan

August 21, 2018

Tsu, Mie Pref.- Japanese police arrested two men on Tuesday for allegedly selling fakes of Suntory Spirits Ltd.'s Hibiki 30 Years limited-edition whiskey via a flea market app.

Takeaki Nemoto, 29, and Yu Sasagawa, 26, both from Tokyo, were arrested by the Mie prefectural police department on suspicion of fraud and violating the trademark act.

The two have admitted to selling the products, but they denied some of the charges, saying that they had no intention of deceiving anyone, according to sources close to the investigation.

They allegedly sold a total of five counterfeits of Hibiki 30 Years on four occasions via the Mercari app, operated by Mercari Inc. to a 29-year-old male corporate employee in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, around June-July last year.

The men, who both work at an antique shop, are suspected of infringing the trademark of Suntory Holdings Ltd., the parent company of Suntory Spirits, as well as cheating the man in Sendai out of 990,000 yen.

According to sources including those at a police station in Yokkaichi, a city in the central Japan prefecture of Mie, the boxes and the bottles of the fake products were from authentic Hibiki 30 Years, but the contents had been replaced.

The police station is investigating the source of the counterfeit whiskeys.

It received a tip-off from a man living in Mie Prefecture on the fake whiskeys around July.

According to Suntory's website, the company only makes a few thousand bottles of Hibiki 30 Years every year and the whiskey costs 125,000 yen a bottle.

Market prices for Hibiki 30 Years are rising steeply, due to the increased popularity of Japanese whiskeys, according to the police station. Jiji Press