A Tokyo District Court has sentenced a former bank employee, Yukari Yamazaki, to nine years in prison for stealing gold bars and cash worth about $2.6 million (¥390 million) from Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, one of Japan’s largest financial institutions.
According to court documents seen on Tuesday, Yamazaki — who reportedly struggled with a gambling addiction — began siphoning the valuables between 2023 and 2024 after running into heavy debts from foreign exchange trading and horse betting.
Leveraging her access and internal knowledge, she tampered with the bank’s security systems to unlawfully withdraw gold bars worth over ¥330 million ($2.2 million) and an additional ¥60 million ($400,000) in cash from customer safety deposit boxes.
Delivering judgment, presiding judge Hironobu Ono described the crimes as “heinous and extremely rare”, stressing that Yamazaki’s conduct represented a “grave betrayal of institutional trust.”
“The circumstances surrounding her actions are so heinous that they have rarely been seen before,” Ono declared.
Although Mitsubishi UFJ Bank has succeeded in recovering part of the stolen assets, a significant amount remains missing.
In her defence, Yamazaki expressed remorse and pledged to seek professional help for her gambling addiction. However, the judge maintained that given the scale and sophistication of her offence, a lengthy sentence was “unavoidable.”
The case has triggered a wave of concern across Japan’s banking sector. Following similar incidents at other financial institutions, the Japanese Bankers Association in June updated its safety deposit box regulations, explicitly prohibiting the storage of cash to tighten internal controls and prevent future abuse.
