A former MUFG Bank employee who stole gold bars and money from customer safe deposit boxes was sentenced to nine years in prison by a Tokyo court on Monday.
Yukari Yamazaki, 47, was accused of stealing gold bars worth about 330 million yen ($2.2 million) and about 60 million yen in cash deposited by six customers at the bank's two branches in Tokyo between March 2023 and October 2024.
In the trial at the Tokyo District Court, prosecutors had sought a 12-year sentence, criticizing Yamazaki for damaging public trust in financial institutions by abusing her position as an acting branch manager.
Prosecutors had also pointed out that the total amounted to over a billion yen when combined with assets the woman is suspected of also stealing from other customers.
Yamazaki confessed in the trial to having taken money and goods equivalent to about 1.7 billion to 1.8 billion yen, while the main banking unit of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. had put the amount at 1.4 billion yen and said about 70 customers were affected.
Her defense team had argued that a five-year prison term would be appropriate as Yamazaki has shown regret and cooperated with the investigation over the series of embezzlements.
Yamazaki, who changed her last name from Imamura following her initial arrest, moved up the ranks after joining MUFG Bank in 1999, and was fired in November 2024 after her theft came to light following a customer's report the previous month.
MUFG Bank has since refunded safe deposit box fees to customers of the Nerima and Tamagawa branches during the periods when Yamazaki worked there and is compensating them for the losses incurred from her thefts.
==Kyodo
© Kyodo News International, Inc., source Newswire
