Who says working at a convenience store isn’t profitable?

Quitting on the first day at a new job is hardly something you want to do if you’re in need of money. In fact, repeat this a few times and before you know it, you’ll probably be penniless and on the street. That is, unless you steal everything you can from your workplace every time you quit. According to police in Oita Prefecture a man in Japan used this method to acquire the equivalent of almost $100,000 USD in a little over a year.

Prefectural police in Oita Prefecture revealed on Tuesday (9/3) that they had arrested a 36-year-old man from Shiga Prefecture who they suspect of having stolen approximately 10,000,000 JPY (~$94,150) from convenience stores spread across 16 of Japan’s 47 prefectures.

According to police, the man’s M.O. was to get hired as a part-time worker at a convenience store and then simply leave during his first day on the job. However, he would not leave empty handed. As he left the store he would take with him whatever money he could get his hands on from the cash registers, safes, and customer purchases during his shift. Police say the most he was able to steal at one time was 1,270,000 JPY (~$11,960 USD). Reports say the man did this a total of 30 times between August of 2017 and October of 2018.

Police in Oita arrested the suspect thanks to information they sent out to convenience store hiring managers around the country in May of last year. The document warned hiring managers of the man, and contained details on his M.O. and appearance.

At about 3 o’clock on October 30 police in Oita were contacted by someone at a convenience store in Oita City. The person told police: “Someone who looks like the man you’re looking for came for an interview. I will hire him so he’ll come in today but please come to check if it is him.” The plan succeeded and police arrested the suspect.

Out of the 30 total times the man is suspected of having stolen from convenience stores, charges had already been pressed for 26 of these by the time news broke on Tuesday.

The man has explained his actions by saying “I wanted money for living expenses and for having fun.”

The suspect is described as “unemployed” in reports suggesting that he had no other form of stable income other than stealing from convenience stores. He also had no known address and is believed to have been living in hotels across Japan, relocating frequently.

Reports say that the suspect would regularly lie about his name, age, address, and work history during his job interviews. Despite that, he appears to have been hired without any problems on at least the 30 occasions on which he is believed to have stolen money from his employers. The suspect’s ability to do this is largely due to the significant labor shortage convenience stores in Japan are currently experiencing.

Convenience stores are extremely common all across Japan and many operate 24-hours-a-day. However, due to a number of factors, including Japan’s steadily dwindling population, there simply are not enough people applying to work at these stores. An owner of a store in Oita that was hit by the suspect was quoted as saying “With the labor shortage ongoing, I was happy to have been able to hire a new person for the first time in an entire year. I never thought this is how things would turn out on his first day at work.” That owner’s decision to hire the suspect would result in 250,000 JPY (~$2,354 USD) being stolen from his store within about two hours of the suspect starting his first shift.

Source: Livedoor News, Oita Press

Image: Pixabay

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