SAITAMA (TR) – Saitama Prefectural Police have arrested an officer over the alleged theft of trading cards that were being stored within a police station as evidence last year, reports the Asahi Shimbun (Jan. 8).
Between October 11 and November 25, Toshiyuki Fujioka, a 25-year-old officer in the Criminal Investigation Division at the Hanyu Police Station, allegedly stole nine trading cards from a storage facility at the station.
According to police, the highly valuable anime cards were evidence from a theft case.
Upon his arrest on suspicion of theft, Fujioka admitted to the allegations. He said, “I spent it all on horse racing. I couldn’t control my urge to gamble.”
A theft of trading cards occurred at a store in Hanyu City on October 4. During the investigation, which included the arrest of a suspect, dozens of trading cards, including the nine stolen this time, were seized and placed in storage seven days later.
Fujioka was in charge of this investigation. On November 25, another investigator noticed that nine trading cards were missing.
An investigation by the prefectural police revealed that Fujioka had sold eight of the nine cards to card buying shops in Saitama and Tokyo for a total of 742,500 yen, with the highest price paid for a single card being 275,000 yen. The remaining card was found in Fujioka’s possession.
Fujioka has been working at Hanyu Police Station since September 2023. Chief inspector Katsuya Saito issued a statement saying, “We deeply regret the arrest of an employee. We will take strict action based on the results of future investigations.”
