Hello and welcome to the details of Around 900 luxury watches ‘go missing’ in Japan and now with the details
Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - The owners of the Rolexes and other pricey timepieces earned monthly deposit fees by loaning them to Osaka-based Toke Match, which would then rent them to customers. — AFP pic/Sotheby’s
TOKYO, March 7 — Around 900 luxury watches worth almost US$13 million (RM61.2 million) are missing in Japan after a site renting them out folded and its owner fled to Dubai, local media reported.
The owners of the Rolexes and other pricey timepieces earned monthly deposit fees by loaning them to Osaka-based Toke Match, which would then rent them to customers.
Neo Reverse, the company that operated Toke Match, announced on January 31 the termination of its service and promised it would return all watches.
But the owners of around 900 watches worth ¥1.9 billion (RM60 million) have not been reunited with their property, the Asahi Shimbun daily and other media outlets reported, citing a group of about 190 owners.
Advertisement
Some of the watches have even been spotted on an online auction site, prompting owners to file dozens of complaints to police around Japan.
The auction site’s operator Valuence Japan told AFP that at least 20 watches it handled had serial numbers matching those loaned to Toke Match.
“We immediately stopped circulation of these watches to prevent further damages from happening” through reselling, a spokeswoman said last week.
Advertisement
Half of the watches were already on the auction site before the Toke Match service was terminated, she said.
The Sharing Economy Association, Japan said in a statement that it had received reports that some of the watches were circulated in second-hand stores too.
The size of Japan’s “sharing economy” market is rapidly growing, reaching ¥2.6 trillion in the last fiscal year, the association says.
Neo Reverse was one of around 400 members of the organisation but was delisted on February 1 following complaints by the owners that their watches had not been returned.
Tokyo police have obtained an arrest warrant for Toke Match’s owner Takazumi Kominato, 42, on suspicion of embezzlement of a Rolex watch, Jiji Press reported Wednesday, citing investigative sources.
He is suspected of selling the Rolex he loaned from an owner to a second-hand dealer for 650,000 yen in January, the report said.
However, Kominato flew out of Japan in late February for Dubai, and police plan to put him on the international wanted list, Jiji said. — AFP
These were the details of the news Around 900 luxury watches ‘go missing’ in Japan for this day. We hope that we have succeeded by giving you the full details and information. To follow all our news, you can subscribe to the alerts system or to one of our different systems to provide you with all that is new.
It is also worth noting that the original news has been published and is available at Malay Mail and the editorial team at AlKhaleej Today has confirmed it and it has been modified, and it may have been completely transferred or quoted from it and you can read and follow this news from its main source.
