Former Johnny's Jr. arrested for fraud

[Tokyograph News]

Yuta Enomoto (28), a former member of Johnny's Jr., has been arrested for fraud. Investigators made the arrest public on Tuesday, saying that Enomoto has admitted to the crime.

Enomoto is suspected of filing a false unemployment claim with the public employment office in Shibuya, declaring that he had been laid off from a company that turned out to be nonexistent. He received roughly 600,000 yen in unemployment benefits between August and November 2007.

However, Enomoto took only about 30,000 yen from that money, handing over the majority of it to his accomplice, a restaurant employee named Itsuki Nishida (37). Nishida appears to be the main culprit in a group of 15 people who have been arrested for similar fraud cases since last August. So far, the group appears to have taken in an estimated 70 million yen off about 120 claims across the country.

Enomoto was part of Johnny's Jimusho during the 1990s and had a role in the drama series "3 Nen B Gumi Kinpachi Sensei." He left Johnny's in 2000 and continued a music career as the vocalist of a band named Circle.

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