A floppy disk, a brokerage bank for vacant houses, 46.3 million yen in lost Corona aid funds – a Japanese community is embarrassed.
Japan’s communities are lagging behind when it comes to digitization.
The Japanese community of Abu has gone underground. The homepage of the town of 3,000 can only be reached sporadically on the Internet since a pandemic posse became known last week, a kind of Japanese prankster.
The Corona aid funds for all eligible households in the community were transferred to just one 24-year-old man, who has since made off with the money. The sum of the disappeared corona aid funds, at least 46.3 million yen, 100,000 yen each for the 463 of the 1,500 households in the remote town in Yamaguchi Prefecture, is less of a cause for shaking heads. It’s also about the way in which the municipal administration and a bank turned a supposedly routine act into a farce:
Tail light for online applications
The mishap started with a floppy disk. As an explanation for the younger readers, as a reminder for the older readers: In the early days of the computer age, floppy disks were highly modern mobile magnetic data carriers. The doubling of the storage capacity to 1.4 megabits in the 3.5-inch variant, which still had an edge length of nine centimetres, caused enthusiasm in the computer world at the end of the 1980s.
Apparently they are still doing their duty in Abu’s community center today. At the beginning of April, the municipal administration conscientiously compiled the data record for the recipients of the state Corona aid money and copied it onto one of these floppy disks. This was then sent to the bank to authorize the transfers. Suddenly you understand why, before the corona pandemic, Japan was at the bottom of the list for online applications among the countries of the OECD, a club of traditional industrialized nations. The government therefore founded a digital agency last year to catch up with the digitization of the administration.
The community of Abu also proved that good intentions can lead to mistakes. To be on the safe side, the officials sent an email with the same data to the floppy disk. And the misfortune took its course. The data in the e-mail was apparently formatted poorly: at least the bank employees thought that all funds should go to the first person on the list. They ignored the floppy disk.
But this was not the last problem: The payments then went to a newcomer of all people – with obviously little loyalty to the local community. The man, who works at a community center in a neighboring town, had rented a house and land in the town with a tax advantage through a vacant-house agency. The homeowner described the lanky young tenant as “a good boy, young and handsome”.
Withdraw money every day
But if you believe media reports, his colleagues saw him as a loner. “He didn’t talk much and didn’t have any friends,” one person is quoted as saying. Stranger in his new home, the beneficiary of the faulty bank transfer apparently did not struggle with his conscience for long. He withdrew some money every day. And after the community tracked him down and asked for the return of the ill-gotten gains, he first claimed to have spent all the money.
As the pressure grew, he made off with the money. Escape is likely to cost him dearly. Last week, Mayor Norihiko Hanada filed a complaint and recovered the sum plus legal fees, totaling 51,159,939 yen. And the mayor vowed: “We will do everything we can to recover this large sum of money that is so important for our residents.” With the lawsuit, he also published the man’s name: a Sho Taguchi. The national media, for their part, did not publish the name for fear of violating the man’s privacy. But they explained to their readers that the national hunt for the ruthless contemporaries had nevertheless begun, apparently with success.
On Monday, a lawyer for the man said that his client agreed to comply with the police request and to be questioned voluntarily. The community of Abu can therefore hope to recover at least part of the aid money.