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The story
Kura Sushi had explained that prizes for its “Bikkura Pon” gacha game were kept under strict lock-and-key storage — yet a theft by a store employee occurred, and on September 3 the company confirmed it was the work of one employee. The company says its investigation is ongoing and has raised the possibility that other undiscovered incidents may exist. Images circulating on social media show the storage case pried open, along with signs that large quantities of the allegedly stolen prizes were being resold on flea-market apps. On 5ch, users questioned how the supposedly locked management system was breached, while opinions split over whether the blame lies with the individual employee or with the company’s oversight.
NEWS Post Seven — published 9/8 (Tue) 5:15 AM
“We began investigating on August 31. On September 3, it came to light that one employee had committed the act. The investigation is still ongoing.”
The company also revealed details about its investigation methods.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
The figure and the banner flag were dirty too, so I threw them out, and unluckily someone found them (turns out it was my own daughter who picked them up, apparently)
HQ: "That's a company policy violation, right? So how many did you hand out for free? You're not telling me you don't even track inventory, are you?"
People who can't do their job get demoted or fired.
That "toy" is causing damages of at least several hundred million yen.
Even if it's aimed at kids, it's damaging the credibility of an IP that generates enormous wealth, and skimming the winning prizes internally could also be called fraud against customers — so unless they handle this properly, at least on the surface, it's going to cause all sorts of trouble.
They're already fully set on firing the guy, huh
Kind of playing the victim, isn't it…
Like HQ did nothing wrong at all
I mean, culprit-at-fault > store-at-fault.
Regardless of the management issues, the "thief" is obviously the one in the wrong lol
Still, the only real fault on their end is that the environment allowed embezzlement to happen in the first place.
Conan: "The culprit is the store manager" (Detective Conan reference)
Sounds like the manager's treated as "management" and probably doesn't get any days off
Even if you put someone in place to watch the manager, you'd just end up asking "what guarantee is there that person isn't the bad guy too?"
Guess that kind of measure really is necessary these days…
Well, since resellers get traced through their listings, they'll eventually track the culprit down properly in the end.
There was also that case of a convenience store clerk illegally reselling Pokémon cards —
stuff like this just never goes away.
That's exactly why embezzlement carries penalties as heavy as fraud.
Doing this for what amounts to pocket change is truly foolish and idiotic.
Calling it "part-timer terrorism" undersells it — this wasn't just a couple of idiots, it's dozens-plus idiots doing it routinely while the company looked the other way, so the company bears responsibility too.
It's like saying "let's shut the whole school down" because one kid shoplifted.
That's forcing your own sense of justice onto others — it's basically a form of violence.
It's disrespectful to the people who had nothing to do with the crime.
If anything, isn't the next-worst person after "the thief" the "person who buys it at auction"?
Getting these prizes with money like that is the wrong way to go about it, don't you think?
If we're sticking with the school analogy, this is more like shoplifting running rampant across every single class.
It's like the school getting complaints from a nearby store.
Once it's at that scale, you can't really say the school bears no responsibility.
Did Yoshinoya get a pass for that Dragon Quest collab thing?
The publisher that just quietly made reader-giveaway prizes disappear internally instead of sending them out — that got a pass, apparently.
This whole topic gives me deja vu —
there was a photo of Yoshinoya employees sorting prizes that went around a while back too.
Mercari: "Tch, the media's making noise about it, so we'll put some countermeasures in place."
The reselling manager: "If Mercari's no good, there's still Yahoo! Auctions and Yahoo! Flea Market!"
Set of 16 teacups sold for 55,000 yen
400 winning bids for the complete 4-piece teacup set
"But only for people who report it themselves, got it?"
This part's pretty bad too.
What do you mean "report it"?
Like you have to bring your receipt from during the collab campaign or something?
Wait, the 10% off was only for people who happened to remember (i.e. spoke up themselves)? Not for everyone lol
Obviously, people won't be satisfied unless there's a proper investigation, formal charges, and fitting social punishment.
Even if the employee gets punished, that doesn't save the customers who poured money in and got scammed.
What Kura Sushi should actually do is compensate those customers.
Store gets identified, then it's the Meat Hope route (referencing the 2007 meat-mislabeling scandal that led to the company's collapse), right?
Obviously both matter.
They used prizes they didn't actually have as bait to lure in customers, so the store's credibility is already in the gutter.
If they want to recover even a little of their corporate image, doing both properly is the bare minimum.
They could just check the security camera footage and know instantly — this is so transparently fake.
Funny how the store just happened to have a power outage at that exact moment.
Part-timer: "Manager, I want to restock the prizes, can you lend me the key?"
Search "Bikkura Pon" and the images come right up —
photos are already circulating on social media showing clear evidence
that the clear case holding the gacha capsules was pried open,
and even now they're still deflecting with this "strict management" spiel —
not gonna fly.
Is this it?
Doesn't look like "strict lock-and-key management" to me.
Background and key points of the debate
Improperly taking non-for-sale prizes can amount to embezzlement, and when misconduct at a single store comes to light, it tends to snowball into a credibility problem for the whole chain. There’s precedent for this — photos of Yoshinoya staff sorting prizes made headlines before, and thread commenters noted the deja vu. The central point of contention was whether this incident should be framed as “one employee’s personal crime” or as “the company’s own fault for lax oversight” — a pattern that keeps resurfacing in “part-timer terrorism” controversies as well. Note that, based on the material available, the company has not made any specific statement about compensating customers who purchased the stolen prizes, or about the outlook for criminal proceedings — that will have to wait for further reporting.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “Kura Sushi responds: why was the locked, tightly managed storage breached? “Investigating, including the possibility of other undiscovered incidents”.”
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