The police here aren’t really making this an issue about his “foreignness” as is evidenced by how the news report doesn’t discuss this element at all. Merely, it would be strange to refer to him by his age (furyo chunen) or by what job he has (seeing as we know he’s a criminal) or that he is merely a male. The fact that a person was a foreigner when committing a crime is a really important characteristic and it would be greatly skewing people’s perception of reality if that fact was kept hidden when reporting it.

One thing that I think can make the wording better (in the eyes of non-Japanese) is to say what nationality he was instead of the fact that he was merely a foreigner. This seems to be the common practice in the US when a foreigner commits a crime. Though, this would be difficult in Japan as Japanese would rather find that more “discriminating” than hiding what nationality the person was by merely labeling the person as a “foreigner.” In fact, in Japan, many times, a Korean criminal or Chinese criminal would be called “Asian” or merely “foreign” because the media is afraid of getting complaints of racism despite merely reporting the truth.

I was impressed by the fact that he raked in 40 million yen selling these things….

Perhaps part of the issue is, why was it necessary to write “furyou gaikokujin” in the first place? Why is the man’s foreignness an issue in this case? Surely not because he had a friend in Thailand – lots of Japanese do too. This is why it looks like yet another case of someone selling dodgy stuff that the police are pimping for publicity purposes and to get in good with Ishihara Shintaro too probably. He likes that phrase.

Also very convenient how this post has a “typo” on what was actually written on that sign by the police so as to make Japanese appear especially discriminatory.