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Too crazy to believe! We all know that food cost has been increasing tremendously over the years, especially when you eat out or order from delivery platforms. However, this man from Japan did his cost cutting in another way, managed to sneak his way out and only got caught after 2 years!
According to See Hua News, a 38 year old unemployed man named Takuya Higashimoto from Nagoya, Japan, has constantly been scamming for free meals for 2 years! How did he do it? The police revealed that Takuya found a glitch in the popular Japanese food delivery platform called Demae-can and has been exploiting since 2023. It was said that Takuya has been registering 124 fake accounts using false names and addresses since 2023, ordering multiple different expensive items like grilled eel lunch boxes, hamburger steaks, and ice cream on it, always choosing the "no-contact delivery" option, and thereafter he would immediately file a complaint via the app claiming the meal was either missing or incorrect, and request a full refund once the food was dropped off.
And how did he managed to? Not to lie, Takuya was pretty smart and “creative”. He used multiple cheap mobile phone service providers (MVNOs) to obtain disposable phone numbers for account verification. After using an account to place a few fraudulent orders, he would delete it and start fresh with a new number — making it incredibly difficult for the platform or police to trace him. Over 2 years, Takuya managed to make 1,095 fradulent orders worth 3.74 million yen (approx. RM104K)!
Now you might be wondering how did the police found out this “ultimate” scam. The scam only unraveled this year when the app’s system flagged unusual ordering patterns. Authorities followed the digital trail and were finally able to arrest him. Upon his arrest, Takuya admitted that: “At first, I just wanted to try it out… but then I got addicted to the free meals.” He claimed he ate nearly all the food himself. Police harshly criticized his repeated and intentional actions, charging him with fraud and handing the case over to prosecutors.
Post the incident, Demae-can recognized the bug in the system and admitted that by relying only on phone numbers to register users were too lenient, of which they've now implemented ID verification and a new transaction monitoring system to proactively detect abnormalities and outliers to prevent such scams.
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