Impressed by a man’s spread of tattoos, a Thai posted a photograph to social media which showed a group of men sitting around a checkers table.
The image was then shared more than 10 000 times on social media, when someone eventually identified the tatted man as Shigeharu Shirai, a 72-year-old Japanese fugitive and former Yamaguchi-gumi gang member.
Now, it has been reported that the man was arrested on Wednesday in a province north of Bangkok, where “he has been hiding for over 10 years to evade murder charges in Japan in connection with the death of a rival gang member,” reports TIME:
Police Gen. Wirachai Songmetta said that Japanese associates paid visits to Shirai two to three times a year, each time bearing cash gifts at around 10,000 baht ($312). He’s married to a Thai woman and kept a low profile over the past decade, police said.
According to police, Shirai was a member of the Yamaguchi-gumi gang, a faction within Japan’s Yakuza. He’s implicated, along with seven others, in the killing of Kashihiko Otobe, who was the deputy leader of the rival Kamiya gang.
Shirai will face illegal entry charges before he is handed over to Japanese authorities, the police statement said.
Yakuza, a blanket term for Japan’s largest crime groups, is thought to have started in the 1870s with the Aizukotetsu-kai syndicate in Kyoto.
But you knew that already, didn’t you?
[source:time]
