On Dec. 3, the Kyoto Prefectural Police’s Anti-Cybercrime Department arrested the same four people on charges of violating the Japanese Copyright Act, and many other laws, the Kyoto Shimbun reports.

Their first arrest was for an upload of the November 2, 2015 of Weekly Shonen Jump, but the new report says that this additional arrest was for repeated and consistent violations of copyright laws during the months of September through November 2015. During that time they allegedly scanned and uploaded four series, including One Piece, from the Japanese magazine Weekly Shonen Jump, distributed to them via one of the four suspects, up to four days before the official publication date in both Japan and English-speaking countries of the world.

According to the 69-year-old Japanese national, a delivery company employee who had already been arrested, and reportedly admitted to the charges, was paid 60,000 – 70,000 yen/month (approx US$480-560/month) to distribute around 170 different magazines to the other three suspects living in Tokyo’s Adachi Ward. The other three suspects, all of Chinese nationality, were also previously arrested under the suspicion of the same violation of copyright law at a different point in time.

One of the Chinese nationals said that “two years ago, we started to upload manga images for the administrator of the scanlation site [Mangapanda], an individual who calls himself “Indonesian”, and were paid 370,000 yen a month for it [approx. US$3,000/month].”

The Japanese national and Chinese national, the programmer of the group, had allegedly also delivered two other series to the now defunct scanlation website “Red Hawk Scans.”

The Sankei Shimbun also notes that the Kyoto Prefectural Police said that there are still illegal scanlations being uploaded days before the official release on the scanlation website “Mangapanda,” meaning that they must be obtaining their manga chapters via illicit channels. The police say they are still busy trying to unravel the workings of this organization.

As a reminder to One Piece Podcast listeners and readers, Weekly Shonen Jump, and other Japanese magazine series, are often published online days before the actual release date due to these kinds of so-called “raw providers” and “scanlators.” If you live in Japan or in the anglosphere (U.S., Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand & South Africa) where VIZ Media offers the official English Shonen Jump weekly digital magazine, then you should know that reading scanlations are not only detrimental to the authors whose manga series you enjoy reading, but also to your own manga reading experience. For those countries without access to the English Weekly Shonen Jump, while there are ways to counter the regional restrictions, please also support your own country’s official releases, and if you find them below your expected standards, or just wish to have the same digital experience as other countries have (U.S., Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand & South Africa), be sure to contact your own country’s official One Piece publisher and/or Shueisha to ask them for it.

Sources: Kyôto Shimbun, Sankei Biz, Sankei Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun