This Is The Greatest Bank Heist in Japanese History
It is the year of 1968 in Japan on the 10th of December. It was a rainy day. People were going on about their day, minding their own business as usual.
Unexpectedly that day, one of the most trusted banks in Japan, Nihon Shintaku Ginko bank was robbed in just the blink of an eye. The bank suffered a massive loss in yen. Specifically, the bank lost of around 300 million yen. That type of currency translates today to about 3 million US dollars. Suffice to say, indeed a lot of money were taken that day. The case still remains unsolved with no apparent suspects, leading the investigation to continuous loopholes. So what happened exactly?
Backstory
It turns out the manager of the Nihon Trust bank was on the edge. He and those around him had received numerous direct death threats over the past few months. Just four days before the actual heist, a letter was sent to the manager’s personal residence demanding 300 million yen or his house would be blown up by dynamite. The letter itself was made up of characters cut out and pasted from movie magazines. After that, the police were immediately notified. Police surrounded both the manager’s house and the bank, keeping a very close eye for any intruders in sight. This however did not ease the mind of the bank manager who shared his concerns with his branch employees. Now of course, this is Japan and work is work. The show must go on — no matter the circumstances.
The manager had to send 4 of his employees to the nearby Toshiba factory to make a scheduled drop. The four branch employees were transporting 294,307,500 yen (or US$817,520 at 1968 exchange rates) in the trunk of a company car. The metal boxes contained bonuses for the employees of Toshiba’s Fuchu complex. But not long after leaving the bank, the four employees started hearing police sirens coming closer and closer by the to their vehicle. At that very moment, the employees happened to be next to a prison.
Suddenly, a police officer riding a motorcycle screeched to a halt in front of the car. The police officer got off the motorcycle to warn them that the branch manager’s home had just been blown up. With people injured and some even presumably dead. And despite the police monitoring the situation closely, the threat was still on the loose. Additional threats were made. Making matters even worse, the bank in particular was now a target and the employees themselves were at risk.
The officer stepped off the motorcycle and crouched down flat to the ground to search underneath the car. Moments later, before the officer could realistically do a proper search, one of the employees noticed smoke coming from the car. With fears emerging that the car was about to blow up, the officer quickly and desperately tried to roll out of the vehicle. Everyone ran away from the vehicle, as fast as they could, taking cover behind the prison walls. And so —
They waited, and waited, for the car to explode. But here’s the catch. There wasn’t any sort of explosion. The employees moved out from cover only to notice — that the company car was missing. The police officer was also gone. Vanished like he wasn’t even in the area to begin with.
As confused as the employees were, they call back the bank manager to find out what was going. To their own relief, the bank manager himself answered back, stating he was safe and sound. In fact, everything was fine. Literally. The bank manager’s home was never blown up. More questions emerged, instead of answers.
It turns out, this entire shenanigan was the perpetrators’ clever plan. Disguised as a police officer, the man had managed to get all of the money for himself and run off without any trouble.
Later at the scene, various items left behind were found on the ground including a warning flare that the officer must have deliberately placed under the car as a distraction to mimic dynamite. It was reported that 120 pieces of evidence were left behind at the crime scene. Usually this would be considered beneficial for the police, helping to track down the thief. Instead it was the exact opposite. The evidence was placed there on purpose to mislead the ongoing investigation. It worked.
Some even get to say to this day, that this was one of the most well planned out Japanese heists with no loss of life and no blood spilt.
Speculation
At the time, a heist like this meant gathering the best of the best to catch the man behind this. After some weeks of policing had gone by, police confirmed that the thief drove the car to a nearby park where he transferred the boxes containing the money to another stolen car. After that, the trail went cold. With no further evidence to continue the investigation, the only thing they had going was a black and white sketch of the supposed suspect.
With the police being under pressure to solve the case, they started questioning possible suspects that were young men with motorcycles living in west Tokyo but came up empty-handed.
It was also speculated that the thief himself was the son of a possibly serving officer amongst the department. So the 19-year-old son of the serving officer was brought in for questioning, but he later committed suicide and was inevitably ruled out as a suspect.
Another suspect, was also ruled out because he proved he was taking an examination at the time. With a third and final possible suspect, the man himself refused to cooperate with the police as there was no efficient evidence to place him as the mastermind behind this and prosecute him.
Makoto Watanabe, an associate professor of media and communications at Hokkaido Bunkyo University, stated that:
“It was also rumoured that it would have had to be someone with inside knowledge of the bank or its procedures for transporting money, the route the car was going to take and so on, but the police never linked any of the employees with the robbery,” he said. “It’s the mystery of who did it and then how he managed to keep it quiet for half a century that still captivates people today.”
To this day, the perpetrator is still on the loose. With insufficient evidence and lack of suspects to continue the case, this heist is still considered to this day one of the most well though-out and masterfully planned heists Japan has ever witnessed. Or even perhaps the world.
