Foreign criminals use slight of hand to rob Japanese stores
Mainichi reports on a series of crimes hitting Kansai:
The foreign thieves follow a set modus operandi, asking shop clerks to show them a number of 10,000-yen notes, returning most but pocketing some of the bills with sleight of hand. In Osaka Prefecture, there were 14 such cases between Aug. 21 and Sept. 1, with the thieves stealing around 1.1 million yen.
According to police, one such heist took place in Osaka city’s Naniwa Ward, where two foreign-looking men in their 30s entered a hardware store and requested to see 10,000-yen bills with serial numbers beginning with SS. The men looked over a number of notes and quickly returned them. It was only later that the shop clerk noticed that 40,000 yen had gone missing.
In a similar case in Akashi, Hyogo Prefecture, a man entered a drug store on Sept. 2 to buy some sweets. At the cash register, he asked to see the 10,000-yen notes in the register. When the shop clerk opened the register the man grabbed a handful of 10,000-yen bills. The clerk demanded he return the money, and the man did so. Later, however, it was discovered that the day’s receipts were 120,000 yen short.
It is quite bizarre that the store clerks granted the requests and allowed the men to inspect the cash.
Update: Here is a clip from TBS’ “The News” in which there is a reenactment of the store clerk handing a pile of cash to the foreigner:
Unlike the previous clip that contained the vague description of “foreign looking” criminals, this one states that they appeared to be from East Asia. In the most recent thefts, which took place in Fukuoka, the criminals used broken English and gestures to ask for an “SS collection” of 10,000 yen bills. The shop clerk, believing them to be foreign tourists who wanted to collect Japanese money, politely handed over money for their inspection. As in the other cases, it was only hours later that he realized the foreigner had secretly collected some extra money.
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