Estimated total of 5 billion yen…Inside photo of “embezzlement warehouse” full of luxury cars hidden by Rakuten Mobile “trading company suspected of embezzlement

In what appears to be a huge warehouse, luxury cars are lined up in rows. This is a scene from a warehouse in Sagamihara City, Kanagawa Prefecture. The maroon car in the foreground on the right is a first-generation Fairlady Z, the silver car on the left is a Lamborghini Uracan GT3 (estimated at 70 million yen), which is said to be difficult to obtain, the black car next to it is a Century (estimated at 20 million yen), Toyota’s most luxurious car, and the white car further back is a Rolls Royce, a top-end model Phantom (estimated at 70 million yen). The white car in the back is a Rolls Royce, the top-of-the-line Phantom (estimated at 70 million yen). The warehouse is lined with about 150 luxury cars, and it is believed that the photo was taken around 2021. The existence of this warehouse was later spread among people who knew what was going on, and it came to be known as the “embezzlement warehouse.

Why “embezzlement warehouse”? This warehouse was a “hidden warehouse” owned by TRAIL Corporation (President: Osamu Hamanaka), a logistics company that filed for bankruptcy on January 13.

TRAIL was one of the clients involved in the 4.6 billion yen “padding of bills” by a former employee of Rakuten Mobile, which came to light last September.

The former employee who padded Rakuten Mobile’s bill was a “transfer group” from Amazon.

Hiroshi Mikitani, president and chairman of Rakuten Group, aimed to expand the business by bringing in customers in the “Rakuten Economic Bloc,” which includes Rakuten Ichiba and Rakuten Bank, to Rakuten Mobile. However, unlike the major cell phone companies Docomo, Softbank, and au, Rakuten did not have cell phone base stations, and in order to expand at a rapid pace, the former employee enlisted the help of two companies, Nippon Logistec and Trail, which were involved in the materials, management, and transportation of cell phone base stations.

It was discovered that the former employee had conspired with executives from these two companies to bill Rakuten Mobile for fictitious consulting fees in addition to the usual outsourcing fees. Rakuten Mobile suspended transactions with the two companies and filed a provisional attachment of the bank account with the court.

Since the majority of Nippon Logistec’s sales came from orders placed by Rakuten and the company had many subcontractors, it was forced to apply for civil rehabilitation immediately after its deposits were seized in August of last year. Total liabilities amounted to approximately 15.1 billion yen, a huge sum. Trail, which had been commissioned by Rakuten to install base stations, was also forced to shut down its business because Rakuten accounted for the majority of its transactions. A source with knowledge of the situation revealed the following.

A former employee of Rakuten Mobile, who was dismissed last August after the company was found to be padding its billing, was originally an Amazon employee. The former employee was deeply involved with Trail when he achieved results in his Amazon business. Because of this relationship, it is said that Trail may have played a central role in Rakuten Mobile’s padding of its billing records.

Since 2019, when these two companies began taking on work for Rakuten Mobile, sales have grown tremendously, with Trail’s sales growing from 900 million yen in the fiscal year ended March 2019 to 19.2 billion yen in the fiscal year ended March 2022. Over the past three years, the company has expanded from only two locations to 17 nationwide, from Sendai in the north to Nago City in Okinawa Prefecture in the south, and is now attracting attention as a fast-growing company in the transportation industry. The company became the focus of attention as a fast-growing company in the transportation industry, and the president, Mr. Hamanaka, began to invest the huge amount of money he had acquired in cars.

Formation of a racing team with a huge investment

One person involved in racing recalls the flamboyant activities of the trail at that time.

In January 2022, Trail formed a team called TMAR (TRAIL MOTOR APEX RACING) and entered the world of drift racing (a competition in which a vehicle is driven while intentionally keeping it running sideways in relation to the direction of travel). I was very flashy in what I did. What they do is flashy. The competition vehicles were also flashy, and they spent a lot of money to build them. The trucks that carried them were also flashy, and many of them were out-of-this-world demo cars.

The racers who were paid high fees were top-notch, but the management staff who came to the race site were clearly not from the racing industry. I think the purpose was, in the end, money laundering (to hide the money obtained through fraudulent billing to Rakuten Mobile).”

After the team was formed, TMAR’s official website reported brilliant results such as “First FDJ win,” “D1 Oku-Ibuki single race and pursuit win! and other brilliant achievements were reported on the team’s official website, and the team frequently holds collaborative events with the world-famous popular custom brand LBWK (Liberty Walk). He also unveiled his new vehicle at “FuelFest,” an event for modified cars from the U.S. held at Fuji Speedway on August 11, 2011.

However, these activities came to a sudden halt in early September of last year. The official website was closed on September 7, and posters for the “LBWK x TMAR KAMUI DRIFT2022,” which was scheduled to be held in Hokkaido on September 11, were hastily redesigned after the team abruptly declined to participate. Just around this time, Rakuten Mobile announced the dismissal of a former employee involved in the fraud on September 2, 2011. Did Mr. Hamanaka suspend his activities so that his complicity in the fraud would not be exposed in any way?

Where is Mr. Hamanaka now?

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, Trail, of which Mr. Hamanaka is the representative, bought luxury cars with the billions of dollars it is believed to have obtained through embezzlement, and kept as many as 150 cars in its “embezzlement warehouse” in Sagamihara City, Kanagawa Prefecture, ranging from luxury cars costing several tens of millions of yen each to extremely rare old Japanese cars costing nearly 100 million yen each. The total estimated value of these cars is believed to reach over 5 billion yen.

A dealer specializing in old cars who had dealings with Trail revealed, “The old Skyline is very valuable.

There were a lot of very valuable old Skyline cars. （I heard that [Mr. Hamanaka] spent tens of millions of yen to remodel these old cars, which are rare and expensive. Japanese old cars are now popular worldwide. In Japan, people stick to the same stock condition as when the car was new, but overseas, people prefer cars that have been customized and tuned to look flashy and have powerful engines.

Many wealthy people buy up cars for investment purposes. Most of the cars in embezzled warehouses have probably been sold to wealthy people overseas. However, on the other hand, we cannot deny the possibility that the cars were not sold off completely but temporarily “escaped” overseas to prevent inspections by the IRS.

There are also a number of contractors who have received orders from Trail, but are in trouble because they have not paid tens of millions of yen in modification fees. One of them reveals, “They don’t care about money.

One of the vendors revealed, “We were told that they would pay any amount of money for modifications, so we placed orders with auto body stores and tuning stores in the vicinity of the embezzled warehouse. In early September, when the trail first “flew off,” there was an uproar. All of the vendors who had not paid the modification fees were in a panic and were hiding the cars so that the IRS would not take them away.

Although he filed for bankruptcy protection on January 13, the attorney for Trail said, “We are in the process of preparing to file for bankruptcy protection, and have not yet filed. We are still in the process of preparing to file for bankruptcy and have not yet done so. We are in the process of sorting things out. We don’t even know where (Mr. Hamanaka and others) are right now. （We also don’t know (that they had a parking lot in Sagamihara that could hold 150 luxury cars).”

We also attempted to contact Trail’s headquarters in Minato-ku, Tokyo, the administrative headquarters in Sagamihara City, Kanagawa Prefecture, and several sales offices, but received no response. The only place where the phone rang was the administrative headquarters.

In the Tokyo District Court, starting in early 2020, interviews with judges are to be conducted by telephone, not in person, for reasons of preventing the spread of coronas. Therefore, even if Mr. Hamanaka himself files for bankruptcy proceedings, it is highly likely that he is currently fleeing the country with his close associates.

Poster before replacement

Poster after replacement