Pokémon Card Owner in Japan Swindled Out of Over $300,000 After Falling for One of the Oldest Fake Money Tricks in the Book

Police in Japan have arrested three men in a Pokémon card-buying scam. The alleged criminals arranged to buy three rare Pokémon cards for 51 million yen (approx. $320,000) from an individual. However, the paper bag they handed over to the victim was just filled with bundles of paper designed to look like real stacks of cash. This clichéd strategy has drawn some amusement on Japanese social media for being like something out of an anime.

Toru Morino (38), Jun Takemura (54), and Eiji Koda (52) are suspected of working together to swindle a man in his 30s out of three valuable and rare Pokémon cards. Back in June 2024, they apparently arranged to meet up with the victim at a hotel in Tokyo to exchange 51 million yen in cash for the Pokémon cards. The accused trio apparently gained the victim’s trust by showing him what seemed to be wads of money in a paper bag. However, after leaving the hotel, the victim discovered that only the top 10,000 yen (approx. $60) note of each bundle was genuine, and the rest were merely pieces of banknote-sized paper. So instead of receiving the promised 51 million yen, the victim only got 1 million yen (approx. $6,295) for his trio of rare Pokémon cards.

According to Japanese news reports, Morino has remained silent, while Takemura and Koda denied any involvement in the incident (FNN Prime Online).

On social media, the case has drawn some amused reactions over the method used by the fraudsters, with many pointing out how the fake bundles of cash seem too much like a cliché from a TV drama or movie to be a real-life strategy. “There really are guys that use that trick,” one commenter mused. Over on Yahoo Japan News, commenters were puzzled as to why the seller didn’t notice the money was fake, with one person saying: “normally you’d count them wouldn’t you? Or at least one bundle.” Another mused: “it’s a crime that plays on psychology,” wondering if the seller didn’t check the money properly because they assumed that the buyers would have prepared the correct amount with the assumption that it would be checked by the seller. “50 million yen is enough to buy a detached house in Yokohama. Handing over that much cash in person… I thought that sort of thing only happened in anime, where they simply pop open a briefcase…”

“The scam is terrible but the state of the Pokémon card scene, in which just three paper cards can command 51 million is pretty terrifying too. I wonder what cards they were?” mused one user on X / Twitter. Police have yet to reveal which cards were involved.

Others pointed out that when it comes to high-value Pokémon cards, exchanging money in person is already “too high risk.” “Nowadays, Pokémon cards are no longer just ‘toys’ but high-value assets,” pointed out another user on X, adding that if owners don’t set up suitably secure methods to sell their valuable cards then such scams will keep happening.

Indeed, the soaring market value of rare Pokémon cards has made them the focus of crimes in recent years. For example, last year a Pokémon card shop in Japan made the news for getting robbed of $92,000 in cards, allegedly by the owner of a rival TCG store. In February 2025, there was a string of Pokémon card thefts across stores in Melbourne, Australia (source: ABC News). In the U.S., there has been a spate of Pokémon card store robberies in cities including Boston, Los Angeles, and Seattle. And in January this year, a Pokémon TCG store in New York was robbed at gunpoint of $116,000 worth of cards during a busy event, with 50 people held hostage.

Photographer: Yuriko Nakao/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.