Tokyo Thief Returns $292,000 Luxury Watch by Courier With Apology Note
Tokyo police are searching for a suspect who stole a $292,000 luxury watch from a Nakano Broadway store and returned it via courier three days later with an apology note.
Tokyo police are searching for a suspect who stole a luxury watch worth approximately $292,000 from a shopping complex last week, only to return it by courier three days later with a handwritten apology note.
The incident took place last Thursday at around 8:00 PM local time at the Kamikichi watch store, located on the third floor of the Nakano Broadway shopping complex in Tokyo's Nakano ward. A man entered the shop and asked to try on a Swiss Audemars Piguet luxury watch valued at roughly 46 million yen. Instead of returning the timepiece to the staff, he fled the scene wearing it.
Two employees were present during the heist, and no injuries were reported. According to reports by the Japanese network TBS, the entire theft lasted only a few minutes. The suspect spent about eight minutes in the store before putting the watch on his left wrist and sprinting away. He fled from the third floor to the basement, leaping down escalators on his way out. A witness reported seeing store employees chasing the man while shouting for bystanders to catch the thief, while area security cameras captured him running down the street.
Three days later, on Sunday morning, store employees received a surprise package delivered by courier containing the stolen watch alongside a handwritten apology note reading simply "I am sorry." Employees verified the watch's serial number and confirmed it was indeed the exact luxury item stolen days earlier. The package was sent from Aichi Prefecture in central Japan, hundreds of kilometers away from Tokyo. Although the shipment included a sender's name and address, police suspect the details are fake and are investigating the sender's identity.
Nakano Broadway is a well-known shopping hub in Tokyo popular among collectors of pop culture merchandise and luxury timepieces. This is not the first high-end watch theft to hit the complex recently; in August, four watches valued at about 200 million yen were stolen from another store on the ground floor, leading to the arrest of two Chilean nationals.
