Why are the yakuza stealing Pokemon cards?

A high-ranking member of the yakuza (Japanese mafia) has been arrested in Tokyo for selling stolen Pokemon cards. Keita Saito was taken into custody in April after the theft of goods worth 1,600 dollars, which included a stack of the popular ‘Pocket Monster’ trading cards. What a comedown for the once fearsome lords of the underworld whose domains included extortion, prostitution, loan sharking, and illegal gambling. It’s as if Don Corleone had been reduced to running the shell game (‘watch the ball, which cup is it under?’) on some New York back street. 

The most significant part of the story perhaps is that Saito is a leader of his crime syndicate, the Takinogawa gang, a faction of Japan’s second-largest syndicate the Sumiyoshi-kai, and not just a young thug new to the business and trying to make his monthly quota any way he can.