Pokemon + Garigarikun
Image: Nintendo/Game Freak/Garigari-Kun

Oh dairy me - looks like someone got caught with his hand in the ice cream jar.

Takashi Ono, a 43-year old man from Japan, was arrested today under suspicion of fraud, after attempting to win Pokémon cards through illegal means. A competition run by Japanese ice-cream manufacturers, Akagi Nyugyo Co., asked people to send in winning popsicle sticks from their Garigari-kun brand. The winning sticks have "You win a Gari-Pokémon card" engraved into them, and winners can send them back to the company in order to redeem them for rare Pokémon cards.

According to Japan Times, Ono is suspected of forging 25 winning popsicle sticks in total. The company contacted police after growing suspicious of so many winning sticks from one person. There are even reports of similar winning sticks selling on auction sites for upwards of $500 (around £367), although a box of the ice creams costs just $3 (£2.20).

PokeGuardian's coverage of the story states that at least one person had to open 41 boxes before finding one lucky stick - it looks like each box has 6 lollies in it, which means that the odds of winning (at least for them) were around 1/246. That means, in order to find 25 sticks, Ono might have had to eat around 6,000 of the pineapple-flavoured treats. Yeah, we see why the company was suspicious.

All this for Pokémon cards? You better believe it. The winning sticks receive a limited-edition Mythical Zarude card, as a tie-in for the upcoming Pokémon movie, Secrets of the Jungle, which comes out in the West this year. The card itself sells for around $300 (£220). Here's the bad boy himself:

Zarude
Image: Pokémon/Nintendo/Creatures/Game Freak

Would you pretend to have eaten thousands of ice lollies for a potential profit? Is this the coolest crime ever committed, or the lamest? Discuss your thoughts below in the comments!

[source japantimes.co.jp, via otakuusamagazine.com]