38-year-old Takuya Higashimoto from Nagoya, Japan, is making headlines after he was arrested for tricking a food delivery platform into giving him 1,000 meals for free.
Meal delivery apps like DoorDash, GrubHub, and Uber Eats are all the rage, and it’s not hard to see why. Despite their high delivery fees and other surcharges, these apps offer a convenient way to enjoy your favorite restaurants without having to leave the house.
However, it’s not uncommon to hear of customers falsely claiming their food was never delivered, usually in an attempt to get refunded and score a free meal. Generally, these customers are punished or denied refunds after too many incidents, but one man from Japan found a way to get around this boundary.
One man in Japan is making headlines for swindling food delivery apps for millions of yen in free food.
Japanese man finesses delivery app for $25K in free food
Takuya Higashimoto is accused of placing a whopping 1,095 fraudulent orders with Demae-can Co., a meal delivery service in Japan. He’s been doing this since April 2023, claiming his food was never dropped off and dodging payments, adding up to 3.7 million yen ($24,370 USD).
The Japan Times reported that he was reimbursed for 16,000 yen (around $105 USD) on July 30 after using Demae-can’s chat function to falsely claim his food hadn’t been delivered, even though he’d received his order.
Higashimoto was able to pull off this ‘heist’ by creating approximately 124 new accounts on the service with false names and addresses, then canceling his membership over the course of two and a half years. He even purchased new SIM cards and changed his phone number to avoid detection, telling authorities he was able to do this successfully on several different apps.
“At first, I just tried this trick. I couldn’t stop after reaping the rewards of my fraud,” he admitted in a statement to police.
Local news outlets say the man ordered a slew of pricey eats, such as ice cream, eel bento, hamburger steaks, and more. Japanese food delivery site work-delivery estimates that he likely scored eight free meals per account before switching to a new one.
Demae-can released a statement after Higashimoto’s arrest, promising to create a system to better detect fraudulent behavior in the future.
“We will take a firm stance against fraud in the future, including by creating a system to detect fraudulent use early on,” the company said.
This is the latest food delivery story to go viral after an UberEats driver helped rescue a customer who was stuck on the roof of a building in New York.
