Two Tunisian men in their 20s have been arrested in Tokyo for allegedly having used Apple’s Face ID feature to unlock a stranger’s smartphone while the victim was drunk and asleep in order to fraudulently send large sums of money through a mobile banking app, according to media reports.
The incident occurred last year on May 15 at a house in Tokyo where a 27-year-old Tunisian man allegedly used the victim’s smartphone to send ¥500,000 to the bank account of his 25-year-old friend, who was also arrested.
The three men are said to have met at a bar in Tokyo’s Roppongi district earlier in the night and immediately hit it off. The victim, also in his 20s, invited one of the men back to his house for more drinks and fell asleep, Fuji TV reported.
It is not exactly clear how the suspect unlocked the phone, since a smartphone’s facial recognition system usually does not work if the eyes are closed.
Fuji TV quoted tech journalist Yo Mikami as saying there is a chance that the suspect opened one of the victim’s eyelids so he could unlock the smartphone.
The two Tunisian men were arrested Wednesday for computer fraud by officers from a police station in Tokyo’s Meguro Ward. They have denied the allegations.