These days, with all the shit that's going on, it's getting harder and harder to earn a living. No doubt turning to a life of crime is an attractive but dangerous option to a lot of people, especially one man who recently got caught for an especially bizarre felony.

The unnamed 34-year-old self-proclaimed sculptor from Higashimurayama was arrested by Ibaraki Prefecture’s Police Cyber Crime Countermeasures Division for breaking the Japanese Copyright Act by selling custom figures of characters from Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie Part 3: Rebellion. Apparently, he bought official figures of magical girls from the movie based on the series, detached their heads and reattached them onto naked female body figurines that he made himself, all without the consent of copyright holder and distributor Aniplex.

The man sold the figures on an auction site in August of last year. According to the police, he made about ¥5.8 million (around US $55,500) between 2018 and 2020 from selling the figures. The man confessed to the charges, saying "I did it to pay for living costs."

This all reminds me of that guy who got arrested a while back for selling illegal Love Live! dakimakura covers. It seems as long as popular things exist, people will do all kind of dodgy deeds to make money off the back of those things. Maybe this guy could have put his modelling skills to good use in a legit job instead of potentially ending up in prison. Don't fuck with other people's intellectual property, kids!

What do you guys make of this? Would you buy figures knowing they're fake and probably illegal? Sound off below!