He should have punched harder and knocked some sense into himself.
They say times are especially tough in the ramen business, with steadily soaring food prices and an intensely competitive market that demands prices be kept low. But let’s not overlook one silent victim in all this: a would-be scam artist working in a ramen restaurant who could barely get away with skimming profit when there isn’t much to begin with. These desperate times have apparently called for some really desperate measures.
On 23 October, at about 9:40 in the evening, the 36-year-old manager of a Kumamoto Ramen Ikugen branch in Namegawa, Saitama Prefecture, called the 110 emergency police number and said he was robbed at knife point. When the police arrived, he told them that the robber jumped him right after closing time, punching him in the face and stealing roughly 670,000 yen (US$4,300) of the restaurant’s cash.
Saitama Prefectural Police launched an investigation, but as it progressed, they began to notice some irregularities. The biggest one was that at the time of the robbery, there were no other people fitting the assailant’s description on surveillance cameras anywhere in the surrounding area.
▼ There are said to be around 5,000,000 surveillance cameras across Japan.
Considering the possibility that this might still be the work of an exceptionally cunning thief, they cautiously began to look at other potential scenarios and turned their attention to the manager. An inspection of his smartphone revealed terms such as “staged robbery victim” in his search history. In light of that evidence, the man confessed and said he had embezzled the money to use for living expenses and playing the pseudo-gambling pinball game of pachinko. He also added that his facial injuries that night were the result of him punching himself in the face.
He was arrested for making a false emergency call and obstructing police duties on 29 January, and police are currently investigating the details of the embezzlement the man had admitted to before pressing charges. Meanwhile, readers of the news weren’t surprised he didn’t get away with his scheme in this age of widespread surveillance in urban areas.
“They always catch this. A kid I went to high school with tried the same thing at a part-time job and got busted.”
“That guy probably had some other embarrassing stuff in his history, too.”
“They got cameras everywhere these days. It’s crazy to try a stunt like that.”
“He was probably researching staged robberies during work hours, too.”
“I don’t like the idea of the police checking a victim’s search history.”
“I thought I remembered the name of that restaurant. It was profiled on a ramen YouTube channel a while ago!”
“I checked the place on Google, and it has really good reviews.”
One silver lining in all that is that the other, law-abiding folks at Kumamoto Ramen Ikugen are getting some great publicity and recognition for their fine culinary work. Perhaps this incident can serve as a reminder for all of us to visit our local restaurant and tell them we love their ramen, before their management goes wacky and starts punching themselves in the face.
Source: Saitama Shimbun, Hachima Kiko, Meiji.net
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