An official of a Japanese post office embezzled and resold more than 100,000 stamps in nearly a year, becoming a “billionaire” who made a profit of hundreds of millions of yen. He was finally arrested.
Police in Osaka Prefecture, western Japan, said on December 1 that during his tenure in office, Yasuhiro Kawasaki, the former Minister of General Affairs of a post office in Osaka Prefecture, was suspected of embezzlement of 133,000 stamps with a face value of 1,000 yen ($10) from September 2017 to June 2018.
After paying the postage of a large number of mail, the mail can be stamped without stamps. The required stamps equivalent to the postage shall be kept by the post office and destroyed by the post office. Kawasaki used this system to corrupt.
Kawasaki is 56 years old and has a total face value of 133 million yen ($1.4 million) of embezzled stamps. He sold the stamps to the acquirer in Saitama Prefecture north of Tokyo on 17 occasions, making a profit of nearly 122 million yen ($1.1 million).
The Japanese tax authorities found Kawasaki’s illegal behavior in an investigation in July this year, and he was fired this month.
The Daily News reported that there had been more similar cases in Tokyo, with two post office staff embezzlement stamps in 2018, making a profit of 540 million yen ($5.6million).
