TWO men were arrested on suspicion of using a computer virus to steal personal information and leak it onto the Internet and then defrauding people of money by offering to resecure the data.

This is the first arrest in the nation in a case of fraud using a computer virus, and it is only the second incident in which computer virus creators have been arrested. The first such arrest occurred in January 2008, when the Kyoto prefectural police arrested the creator of the so-called Harada virus on suspicion of violating the Copyright Law.

According to Metropolitan Police Department sources, Kenzo Oka, 27, a company employee of Kita Ward, Tokyo, and another man, 20, were arrested Tuesday and May 10, respectively. The name of the younger man, who is a member of an Internet advertising company in Saitama Prefecture, is being withheld because he was 19 years old at the time of the incident.

According to the MPD sources, in November the two allegedly defrauded several people of several tens of thousands of yen by concealing a virus in an adult computer game. The two created a system that infects a computer with the virus when its user downloads the game via file-sharing software such as Winny.

The two men would then allegedly tell the victims that the leaked information could be deleted from the Internet in exchange for a 5,800 yen (S$90.48) fee.

About 5,000 people's personal computers are believed to have been infected with the virus, named Kenzo, which Oka allegedly developed at the request of the younger man.

When a computer is infected with the virus, its user's personal information--including name, address, e-mail address, telephone number and browsing records--are leaked on the Internet.

-The Yomiuri Shimbun/Asia News Network