On February 28, an employee was arrested for robbing what was reported to be 170 bottles of high-quality luxury whiskey. The stolen liquor was worth approximately 7.7 million yen ($66.706).
The culprit has been identified as Akito Kodama of Fukuoka, who’s professionally involved in the home renovation business. He allegedly stole alcohol from the victim’s house during renovation while the house owner was away for a little less than a year. To the owner’s surprise, tons of his branded high-quality whiskey were missing when he returned to his home. Bottles of carbonated water were substituted for expensive whiskey in boxes.
VICE World News was told by a spokesperson for Sawara police station in Fukuoka Prefecture that many of the bottles contained expensive whiskey. The most valuable stolen item was worth 37,000 yen ($3,207).
On April 4, the police received a complaint from the homeowner. The spokesperson stated that it took many months to identify the suspect because there were so many people in and out of the victim’s home at the time.
The suspect came into police’s notice when they interviewed a couple of people related to the case; they were informed about the person looking after the owner’s house and how he had suddenly disappeared.
To verify if the suspect was selling liquor to the online stores and nearby alcohol shops, they received affirmation and found the suspect was selling the stolen alcohol.
The sold whiskey bottles matched the ones found in the victim’s house, which he kept track of.
The spokesperson for the police stated that the victim initially reported the crime to them; they were concerned that the man might be lying about the theft of all the whiskey bottles. He said that he could have had an ulterior motive. Maybe all the bottles were not stolen. The spokesperson stated that the crime needed to be investigated further.
He said that the missing bottles of Japanese whiskey had not been returned to the victim yet.
Source: VICE News
Also read about Ninja Museum In Japan Broken Into At Night Gets Over $9000 Stolen