TOKYO — A former employee at a post office in the suburban Tokyo city of Tachikawa was arrested on March 23 for allegedly using a scam to steal postage stamps worth 12.6 million yen (about $104,000) by reporting a padded number of spoiled New Year postcards brought to his then workplace to have exchanged for the stamps.
The Metropolitan Police Department’s second investigation division arrested Hideyuki Omori, 56, a former coordination division chief at Tachikawa Post Office who lives in Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture, on suspicion of fraud. He has reportedly admitted to the allegations against him.
Japan Post Co. had handed Omori a disciplinary dismissal on Jan. 27 on the grounds that he used fraudulent means to steal stamps worth a total of 290 million yen (approx. $2.4 million) between April 2016 and September 2021 by employing similar tactics, and filed a criminal complaint against him. Police are investigating the details, believing that he repeatedly swindled the post office out of stamps.
In the specific case Omori was arrested over, a printing company in the suburban Tokyo city of Tama brought some 1.8 million New Year postcards that had been spoiled, such as through printing errors, to Tachikawa Post Office in August 2021, when Omori was the coordination division head. He is accused of padding the number of postcards by 200,000 more than the actual…
