Undefeated KNOCK OUT Black champion Rina Okamoto, better known by her ring name Panchan Rina, explained the circumstances of her arrest through a video that she released on her YouTube channel.
Okamoto was arrested on December 5 this past year, on charges of defrauding a 35-year-old man from Kobe City of 99,900 yen ($730) using a mobile payment service. According to the police, she put up the fake listing on an internet auction site, offering limited-edition merchandise that was sold at the Tokyo Dome during 'THE MATCH 2022' between Tenshin Nasukawa and Takeru. The 28-year old admitted to the allegations immediately after her arrest.
According to Okamoto, she herself was scammed out of 15,000,000 yen ($115,491) by an acquaintance, having given him 3,000,000 yen on five different occasions. In ordered to recover her losses, Okamoto began selling various articles of merchandise online, some of which were forgeries. The KNOCK OUT ace was unable to make money through fighting during at time, as she had suffered an ACL injury in training this past April.
"This incident is totally the fault of my weak will. In March of this year, an acquaintance recommend an investment to me. Because it was my first time investing I had no knowledge or understanding of how things worked, but even so I invested over 3 million yen. I should've quit when I realized it was a scam, but I couldn't fight off the desire to make up the loss and, by June, the loss exceeded 15,000,000 yen."
Although her formal apology was accepted by the victim, the case is currently in the hands of the prosecutor's office and it is as of yet unclear what sort of punishment Okamoto will face.
