EHIME (TR) – The Ehime Prefectural Government announced on Thursday that an unknown person sent roughly 100 million yen in damaged bills to the office with a note saying that the money was to provide “help,” reports the Asahi Shimbun (Feb. 14).
On January 29, a cardboard box addressed to the prefectural governor arrived at the office. The name and address of the sender were later revealed to not be real, the government said.
The 10,000-yen notes, which were waterlogged and caked in mold, arrived packed in stacks inside the box. A letter also found within the box said that the sender wanted to “offer help in some way.”
Since the bills did not contain a hologram to prevent counterfeiting, the government suspects that they were printed before 2004.
After an investigation, police determined that the matter was not criminal in nature. The matter is now being treated as a donation.
The government is now planning to send the bills to the Bank of Japan to be exchanged for fresh notes. The money will be used as a part of recovery efforts following extreme flooding in Ehime and other nearby prefectures last year.
