IBARAKI (TR) – Ibaraki Prefectural Police have arrested a midwife in Tsukuba City for allegedly defrauding support funds for a free COVID-19 testing program two years ago.
According to police, Yuki Ogawa, 51, is suspected of falsifying invoices to make it appear that she conducted 487 COVID-19 tests at her Tsukuba Midwifery Clinic Smile Birth between April and August 2022.
The falsifications netted her approximately 7.7 million yen in support funds, police said. Ogawa is believed to have simultaneously submitted invoices for actual tests and forged invoices for tests never administered.
As reported by Nippon News Network (Sep. 18), police have not revealed whether she has admitted to charges of fraud and forgery.
According to police, Ogawa collected only about a dozen specimens for PCR testing and outsourced them to a laboratory over that period. She is believed to have forged invoices for tests and padded the subsidy applications.
According to the prefecture, the clinic applied for approximately 6,500 subsidies between March 2022 and May 2023 for approximately 42.93 million yen.
In June and July 2021, the prefecture began examining past applications following fraudulent submissions by other businesses. It was at this time that suspicions of fraud arose due to the large number of applications.
