The number of men who have died under suspicious circumstances and are possibly linked to a Tottori Prefecture woman arrested earlier this month over a fraud case has now reached six, investigative sources said Saturday.

Investigators have found that a prefectural police officer, who was found hanging in February last year, was an acquaintance of the 35- year-old woman who is at the center of a series of recently reported suspicious deaths.

Other men whose suspicious deaths were reported earlier this week are a Yomiuri Shimbun reporter who was run over by a train and killed in May 2004 when he was 42, and a 27-year-old company employee who drowned in August 2007 in the Sea of Japan along the coast of the prefecture.

The reporter had become acquainted with the woman as a customer of a bar in Tottori where she worked, while the company employee had lived with her for a period.

Suspicion also surrounds the deaths of Hideki Maruyama, 57, who was found in a river in Tottori in October, Kazumi Taguchi, 58, who lived in the same apartment compound with the woman and died at his home in October shortly after becoming ill, and Kazumi Yabe, 47, a truck driver who found in the ocean off Tottori in April.

All had been acquainted with or had financial troubles with the woman.

Police sources earlier said foul play is suspected in some of the deaths with sleep-inducing drugs and ingredients of a cold medicine found in their bodies.