Not-So-Daily Link of the Day II: Japanese police arrested 33-year-old Shintarō Momoi and his 25-year-old wife Yumi on fraud charges on Monday, after they allegedly swindled two limited-edition Evangelion phones from an online auction without paying for them. According to the Niigata prefectural police, the two Miyagi Prefecture residents bid on an auction for the phones from a male office employee in his 20s from Niigata. The couple reportedly requested the payment-on-delivery option for the auction in late July of last year, but did not actually pay when they received the phones.
The closing price of the auction was 270,000 yen (about US$2,700). The original market value of the phones was 98,000 yen (US$980) each or 196,000 yen (US$1,960) for both. Momoi allegedly admitted to reselling the phones already.
Evangelion director Hideaki Anno and his animation company Studio Khara supervised the design of Eva Mobile Phone for the NTT docomo service provider and the manufacturer Sharp. The SH-06A NERV phone made a cameo in last year's Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance (Evangelion Shin Gekijōban: Ha), the second of Anno and Khara's four theatrical remakes of Gainax's Neon Genesis Evangelion science-fiction television anime series. The pre-orders for the first 20,000 phones sold out in just five hours on June 5, 2009. (The film opened in Japan later that month.)
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