6 years jail demanded for foot-cult exec Mainichi Shimbun, 2001.10.18 A former executive of the foot-reading cult Ho-no-Hana Sanpogyo should spend six years behind bars helping the cult swindle millions of yen from people, prosecutors told the Tokyo District Court Thursday.

In a concluding speech, prosecutors said Yasunori Lee, the former No. 2 in the cult, played an indispensable role in helping cult guru Hogen Fukunaga swindle 31 people out of a combined 149 million yen.

"The defendant played a necessary and indispensable role in the forming and maintaining of the religious organization's fraud system," a representative prosecutor said. Prosecutors have demanded that Lee be jailed for six years for his crime.

Defending lawyers have requested a lenient sentence, saying that he was not the cult's No. 2 man.

Lee, who is also known as Hoshiyama, allegedly conspired with Fukunaga to swindle 31 people out of 149 million yen between 1994 and 1997 by reading the soles of their feet then telling them they would suffer misfortune if they didn't take part in the cult's expensive training sessions.

A ruling on the case will be made on Dec. 6. (Mainichi Shimbun, Oct. 18, 2001)

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