KANAGAWA (TR) – A female police officer with the Kanagawa Prefectural Police resigned after she was caught siphoning some 1.5 million yen in funds for use at host clubs in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward, reports Jiji Press (Apr. 28).
On Friday, the woman, a 24-year-old officer within the community safety division of the Minami Police Station, resigned after she was suspended from duty for three months for allegedly claiming 1.54 million yen as travel expenses between October of 2016 and February of this year when she was in fact fraudulently spending the funds at host clubs.
“I am truly sorry for putting my hands on everyone’s money,” said the woman, who managed travel expenses for 15 colleagues. “I thought everything would be fine as long as I returned the money.”
The matter came to light after a male section manager, 54, discovered irregularities in the accounts of the division.
The woman said she was invited by a high school classmate to visit a host club in November fo 2015. She subsequently visited four to five establishments two or three times a month in the Kabukicho red-light district of Shinjuku. During some months, the number of visits exceeded 10, she said.
She eventually became a regular at one of the clubs and visited at least 60 times, accumulating credit card loans worth about 5 million yen as well as running up a tab of 500,000 yen at the establishment.
