Former Rakuten Mobile Employees and Others Arrested on Fraud Charges, Photos of Inside “Embezzlement Warehouse” Full of Luxury Cars Stashed by Suspect Osamu Hamanaka

On March 3, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department arrested three men, including a former executive of Rakuten Mobile, on suspicion of fraud for defrauding the company of approximately 2.5 billion yen by charging a huge amount of padded bills in connection with the consignment of equipment transportation for the construction of Rakuten Mobile’s cell phone base stations.

Arrested were Tomonori Sato, a former employee of Rakuten Mobile; Kazunari Mitsuhashi, former managing director of Japan Logistics, a subcontractor; and Osamu Hamanaka, president of a subcontracting company and former representative of TRAIL Co.

FRIDAY Digital learned that Sato, a former employee of TRAIL, was a “transfer team” who was recognized for his achievements in creating a new transportation flow at Amazon, and that Hamanaka, who conspired with Sato and played a central role in the padding of the bill, became involved with Rakuten Mobile in 2019, when the company’s sales began to increase rapidly. The article published on January 25 is reproduced here with some additions (age, title, etc. remain as they were at the time).

Luxury cars are lined up in a row in what appears to be a huge warehouse. 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 expensive 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, a logistics company that filed for bankruptcy on January 13. Hamanaka, who was arrested on March 3, was the representative of the company.

TRAIL was one of the business partners involved in the “massive padding of bills” by a former employee of Rakuten Mobile that came to light last September. Several news organizations reported that Rakuten Mobile’s loss was 2.5 billion yen, but FRIDAY Digital’s report estimated the loss to be as much as 4.6 billion yen. The former employee was Tomonori Sato, who was arrested along with Hamanaka.

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

Hiroshi Mikitani, president and chairman of Rakuten Group, aimed to expand business by bringing in customers from the Rakuten Economic Bloc, including Rakuten Ichiba and Rakuten Bank, to Rakuten Mobile. However, unlike the giants Docomo, Softbank, and au, Rakuten did not have cell phone base stations, and in order to expand at a rapid pace, Sato 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 Sato, in cooperation with Hamanaka and Kazunari Mitsuhashi, the representative of Nippon Logistic, who was an executive of these two companies, had been padding Rakuten Mobile’s billing under the guise of fictitious consulting fees in addition to the usual outsourcing fees. Rakuten Mobile suspended transactions with the two companies and applied to the court for provisional seizure of its bank account.

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. The total debt is huge, amounting to approximately 15.1 billion yen. 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 billings.

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 it is going). 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 a 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 Hamanaka suspend his activities so that his complicity in the fraud would not be exposed in any way?

The total value of the luxury cars in the embezzlement warehouse is estimated at over 5 billion yen.

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the trail headed by Mr. Hamanaka bought luxury cars with the billions of yen he is believed to have obtained through embezzlement, and 150 cars were kept in the “embezzled 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 the vendors who had not paid the modification fees were in a panic and were trying to hide the car so that the IRS would not take it away.

Just before the publication of the article on January 25, FRIDAY Digital contacted Trail’s attorney, who replied, “Trail has filed for bankruptcy protection as of January 13.

We are in the process of preparing to file for bankruptcy, but we haven’t filed yet. 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.

Mr. Hamanaka, the representative of the trail in the vortex, who is believed to have bought these cars with padded money, modified them to increase their value, sold them overseas, and kept the money overseas, was also the subject of a theory circulating in some circles that he had traveled abroad. Will the arrest bring the whole case to light?

Poster before replacement

Poster after replacement