Three men charged over Pokemon Go robberies

Three men in Missouri have been charged with robbery and armed criminal actions after authorities said they seemed to have targeted victims using a new Pokemon phone game.

Police in O'Fallon, Missouri, said that four people in a black BMW with a handgun were arrested just after 2am on Sunday following a report of an armed robbery.

The fourth person, a juvenile, has been taken to a youth detention centre.

The game, which was released last week, is an augmented reality game where users need to find Pokemon characters hidden in real world locations and capture them.

In a statement, O'Fallon Missouri police department said: "The way we believe it was used is you can add a beacon to a pokestop to lure more players.

"Apparently they were using the app to locate people standing around in the middle of a parking lot or whatever other location they were in."

The full statement was posted on Facebook:

The arrests come just two days after a 19-year-old woman playing the game discovered a dead body floating in a river while hunting for a 'water-type Pokemon'.