Shanghai police find Japanese idol's portrait used on fake taxi license

An illegal taxi driver was detained after Shanghai police found he used a fake operating license with the portrait of a Japanese idol.

Police stopped a suspicious red Falanhong taxi at a check point on Jiangsu Road on July 21. However, the driver failed to hand over his driver and vehicle licenses.

Officers also found the operating license in the cab was not that of the driver himself due to the big difference in appearance. A young policeman figured out that the photo on the card was a Japanese star, Satoshi Ohno.

Satoshi Ohno, who was born in 1980, is a singer, actor, artist and choreographer. He is the lead vocalist and head of popular Japanese boy band Arashi, and reportedly has no driver's license.

The Shanghai driver, surnamed Cao, confessed to buying the cloned taxi and fake operating license together online, at the cost of more than 10,000 yuan. He said he didn't pay attention to the source of the photo.

It's reported that the photo was from Arashi's album "GUTS".

Police also discovered that Cao had illegally installed a small motor in the taxi which could defraud passengers by tampering with the meter.

Cao was punished with ten-days' administrative detention for using a forged license while his cloned cab was compulsorily scrapped.