Overview
- Osaka Prefectural Police on March 4 re-arrested judicial scrivener Ryōhei Matsumoto, 34, on suspicion of forging sealed private documents and falsifying and using electronic public records, and they arrested Takahiro Mannaka, 50, and Maharu Nagata, 57, on the same suspicion.
- Investigators say the suspects in November–December 2024 submitted falsified minutes of an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting to the Legal Affairs Bureau to install Mannaka as representative, then applied to register a sham transfer to a company tied to Nagata.
- The targeted property is an approximately 170-square-meter vacant lot along the Dotonbori river in Osaka’s Minami district owned by a city real-estate firm.
- The owner discovered the unauthorized registry change and filed a lawsuit at the Osaka District Court in March 2025 seeking cancellation.
- All three suspects have admitted the allegations, and police are probing coordinated ‘jimen-shi’ activity after smartphone forensics indicated tasking via an encrypted app and possible higher-level organizers.