Student Makes a Million Online, Gets Deported

Via Kotaku, a story at the Mainichi daily news about an enterprising exchange student that got himself deported. Wang Yue Si, a Chinese student who went to Japan on a student visa, found himself in need of some spending money. Since he was a gamer, he decided to make some cash by selling virtual items online. He was so successful, the cops noticed. From the article: "He started selling items such as weapons and currency for online games through an Internet auction site in April this year, without obtaining the appropriate residency status. Wang, living in Kumamoto, has admitted that he sold the virtual goods for about 6 million yen ($US 1.3 Million), in violation of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law. A bank worker became suspicious when Wang regularly sent money back home to China and alerted police in August, prompting Kumamoto police officers to investigate the student."

Comments

1 Million Dollars?

[MoriaOrc]

Summary says "6 million yen or $1.3m" .. but 6m yen is only about 50k dollars (1 yen is slightly less then 1 cent in value) .. so .. which is it?

Re:1 Million Dollars?

[tilandal]

He has admitted to selling 6m Yen but is suspected for selling over 150m Yen. Poor job on the write up.

Re:1 Million Dollars?

[ack154]

Per the article, he has sold a TOTAL of about 150 million yen... which works out to roughly $1.3 million, USD.

Re:1 Million Dollars?

[MoriaOrc]

(sorry to reply to myself, but now that I've actually RTFA rather then just the summary...)

The (U.S. $1.3 million) is not in the article. The yen that is about 1 million US dollars in worth that they are talking about is the 150 million yen that he is suspected of having made, rather then the 6 million he has admitted to making.

Also, the article didn't make that conversion in the summary (the 6 million yen = 1 million U.S.).

Re:1 Million Dollars?

[lordmetroid]

In Japan a Student Visa legally allows you to earn 0 yen in profit made from any work or service you provide. So yeah, no wonder he was deported!

The same thing could happen in the US

[tadd]

If you are on a student visa, you're not supposed to be making money by working, you're supposed to be studying. no I know there are ways around this, but with most of them, if you get caught, you go home.

Article says *arrested*, not deported

[njdj]

The article says: "A university student from China has been arrested for illegally engaging in business activities outside the restrictions of his student visa, police said." Arrested, not deported.

Of course it's an English summary of a Japanese original. Does anyone here read Japanese well enough to check the original source?

About the discrepancy in the money amounts mentioned in another reply: 6 million yen is what the student has admitted. That's nowhere near $1 million. Police suspect his total profit is 100 million yen, which is near enough $1 million.

Re:Idiot.

[magarity]

Either way, he made that money fair and square in my opinion (after taxes withheld by the sticky-fingered state of course)
 
He made it failry in terms of his customers got what they paid for but the authorities are mad because he DIDN'T pay income taxes on it; he was a foriegn exchange student and wasn't supposed to be making any income in the first place.

Should have asked for payment in China

[saikou]

"Virtual Enterprise" trick will work only if you receive money in the country where it's registered. So if you have a nice little company in Germany that sells virtual stuff in US, you have to bill your customers from Germany, and receive your funds there.
And if you are in US on tourist visa, you can't keep selling your virtual "German made" stuff on a regular basis, as then you are working in US, and either need to have a local branch or work visa.
Japan did a normal thing in this case -- you don't have work permit, yet regularly cash in cheques? Goodbye!
Otherwise anyone could work as a salesman without any visa, claiming that goods were "made in another country".