Tokyo police arrest 16 over yakuza-linked health insurance fraud
JIJI Nov 7, 2015 Japan Times
Tokyo police have arrested a total of 16 gangsters and others on charges of swindling municipal governments out of public health insurance money.
The arrested include Keitaro Mito, 49, boss of a group affiliated with the Tokyo-based Sumiyoshi-kai, a major yakuza crime syndicate, and Kazuo Hayakawa, 38, an executive at an information technology-related company.
The Metropolitan Police Department arrested Mito and 13 others Friday afternoon. Two more suspects were nabbed later.
On Saturday, police raided the Sumiyoshi-kai’s head office in Minato Ward as well as eight other sites.
According to the MPD, Mito and the others have been charged with defrauding four municipalities, including Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward, of about \450,000 by filing for public health insurance payments on fake practices at an orthopedic clinic in the capital between August 2011 and June 2013.
The clinic, which closed in October 2013, filed insurance claims totaling some \27 million to cover service costs for about 350 patients during its two years in operation.
Authorities suspect that among those claims, there are more bogus ones that have not yet been uncovered, investigative sources said.
The sources also said that Mito’s group is believed to have carried out similar schemes with other orthopedic and dental clinics in Tokyo and Chiba Prefecture, possibly defrauding municipalities of as much as \100 million in total. The money likely went into Sumiyoshi-kai coffers, they added.