December 10th

On this day – 10^th December 1968 – The biggest unsolved robbery in Japan

The “300 million Yen robbery” was the largest heist in history in Japan. The robbery happened in the morning on the 10^th when four bank employees transported 294,307,500 Yen (about 817,520 US dollar at the time). A uniformed officer who claimed their bank officer’s house had been blown up stopped their car and told them he had to look for dynamite under the car. The employees believed him due to the bank previous experiences with threats and exited the car. The officer crawled underneath to look for the dynamite. Moments later, smoke and flames erode from under the car and the police officer shouted at the employees that the car was about to explode. While they moved as far away as they could get, the officer got into the driver’s seat and stole the whole car and all its money.

The fire under the car turned out to have only been from a warning flare the thief had ignited himself. He changed his car, and the police was not able to trace him. 120 pieces of evidence was left behind by the robbery, but most of them were left on purpose just to confuse the police. A seven-year investigation was conducted, but never led anywhere. The robber can, however, probably count himself as one of Japans most successful robbers of all time. No one was hurt, the robber happened I broad daylight and he got away with 300 million yen, and his identity is still not known.