A Brief History
On December 10, 1968, a fake motorcycle cop stopped employees at the Nippon Trust Bank and stole 294 million yen, about $1 million in US dollars. Known as the “300 Million Yen Robbery,” the dramatic heist is not only the largest robbery in Japanese history, it is still unsolved to this day!
Digging Deeper
To sell the fiction of being a police officer, the faux cop told the bank employees there was a bomb threat on their delivery car, and he even crawled under the car to “confirm” the presence of the bomb. The robber also lit a flare under the car to create smoke and flames to create the appearance of an explosive. He then drove off with the car, a fortune in the trunk, to transfer the loot to a pre-staged stolen car, also later abandoned.
The only suspect was a 19 year old son of a police officer, but that person committed suicide and no loot was ever found.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Aoyama, Kotaro. Fuchu 300 million yen robbery in 30 minutes: Showa’s largest unsolved case. Aoyama Books, 2021.
Romero, Soledad. Famous Robberies. Little Gestalten, 2022.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by As6673 of a 50 yen coin, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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