Woman Arrested For Selling Customer Bottled Water Instead Of A PS5

In Shiga, Japan, a person has been arrested for fraud because they sent their customer two bottles of water rather than the PlayStation 5 that they'd paid for.

The absurdity of this story is something, but when you consider how scarce these consoles are, that customer must have had their expectations dashed. Since November 2020, Sony has seen almost eight million units shipped across the globe, and it was over the moon given the issues that the pandemic incurred. "It's been difficult, it's been challenging from the production side, not being able to get anybody into the factories in Asia," said Jim Ryan, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, in an interview last year. "Before we started production, we had to do all the manufacturing preparation by camera remotely. I mean, just imagine that for a precision device like the PlayStation 5." Owing to the discrepancy between supply and demand, scalpers swooped in like vultures. Even the government bodies in the UK have had enough, and took action against those who purchase goods online using automated bots.

So, this woman sold a PlayStation 5 to someone for 65,000 yen, which works out to be $596 in the U.S. It was a cash on delivery order, meaning that the customer pays when the product arrives at their address and not before. Unfortunately for the seller, it seems as though she was caught red-handed, as the person opened the box to find a pair of two litre bottles of water inside. The customer couldn't get in touch with the woman from Shiga so they decided to call local law enforcement (thanks to Kotaku for translating the story from FNN).

The seller has defended herself, claiming that she "shipped the package, but [she didn't] remember what was in it," and denies that she intended to mislead the customer. According to statistics from last year, Japan has a conviction rate of over 96%, so it's difficult to know what this woman might have been trying to achieve given that the truth of the package was always going to be revealed. Well, we hope that the customer gets their hands on a real PlayStation 5 next time.