A Chinese man was referred to prosecutors on Monday for allegedly disrupting a major mobile carrier’s services in Tokyo’s Ginza shopping district with a rogue cell tower device, with police investigating possible links to a phishing scheme using illegal radio signals.
Yu Hai, 31, an unemployed resident of Tokyo’s Kita ward, was arrested on Saturday allegedly in the act of operating a base station without a licence, using the device from a car parked on a Ginza street to emit radio signals to interfere with NTT Docomo’s services, Tokyo police said. The alleged offence falls under Japan’s Radio Law.
Police believe he used an IMSI catcher, a device that collects mobile phones’ identifying numbers. They suspect it emitted strong radio signals to force nearby handsets onto an older 2G network before sending them text messages.