Nintendo / Game Freak / Garigari-KunOh, dairy me – it looks like someone was caught with their hand in the ice cream jar.
Takashi Ono, a 43-year-old man from Japan, was arrested today on suspicion of fraud after trying to win Pokemon cards by illegal means. A competition led by Japanese ice cream makers, Akagi Nyugyo Co., asked people to send the winning ice sticks from the Garigari-kun brand. The winning entries are marked “Win a Gari-Pokémon card”, and the winners can send them back to the company to redeem them for rare Pokémon cards.
According to the Japan Times, Ono is suspected of forging a total of 25 winning ice sticks. The company contacted the police after becoming suspicious of so many one-person winning sticks. There are even reports of similar winning sticks being sold on auction sites for over $ 500 (about £ 367), although a box of ice cream costs only $ 3 (£ 2.20).
PokeGuardian cover of the story says at least one person had to open 41 boxes before finding one Lucky stick – it seems that each box has 6 lollipops in it, which means that the chances of winning (at least for them) were around 1/246. This means that in order to find 25 chopsticks, Ono might have had to eat about 6,000 pineapple-flavored delicacies. Yes, we see why the company was suspicious.
All this for Pokémon cards? You better believe. The winning sticks receive a limited edition Mythical Zarude card, as a correlation for the upcoming Pokémon movie, Secrets of the Jungle, which will appear in the West this year. The card itself sells for around $ 300 (£ 220). Here is the bad boy himself:
© Pokémon / Nintendo / Creatures / Game FreakWould you pretend to eat thousands of lollipops for a potential profit? This is the coolest crime ever committed or the weakest? Discuss your thoughts below in the comments!