High school student illegally obtains adult’s bank account to play online casino

A 16-year-old student illegally obtained a bank account opened in an adult’s name to play online casino games, police said.

“I wanted to have an account under an adult’s name to bet on Internet casino games and bicycle and boat races,” police quoted the male first grader at a private high school in Yachiyo, Chiba Prefecture, as saying.

The Metropolitan Police Department sent papers on the case to the Tokyo Family Court on Friday on suspicion of violating the act on prevention of transfer of criminal proceeds.

According to police, the student bought the ID and password of a Web bank account for 17,000 yen from a 41-year-old housewife in Aichi Prefecture last August, after soliciting bank account sellers on an Internet bulletin board using his home PC, saying he would pay about 10,000 yen.

Around July 2007, the student, who was in the third grade of junior high school, also registered to play online casino games using his mother’s credit card, and worked up about 1.3 million yen in debts, according to police.

In late November last year, the teenage boy defrauded a total of about 70,000 yen from three people by promising to give them bank accounts. The student came up with the idea after running out of money.