TOWN’S COVID-19 MONEY WAS SENT TO MAN IN ERROR; HE GAMBLED IT ALL

TOKYO » Residents of a rural Japanese town were looking forward to receiving a $775 payment each last month as part of a pandemic stimulus program.

But a municipal official mistakenly wired the town of Abu’s entire COVID-19 relief budget, nearly $360,000, to a single recipient on the list of low-income households eligible to receive the money. After promising to return the accidental payment, police said, the man gambled it away.

The man, Sho Taguchi, 24, told police that he had lost the money in online casinos, a police official in Yamaguchi prefecture said by phone Thursday. The day before, authorities arrested Taguchi, the official said. The charge: fraud.

Japan is not the only country where coronavirus relief money has been misappropriated. The fraud has been so widespread in the United States that the Justice Department recently appointed a prosecutor to go after it. People have been accused of buying a Pokémon card, a Lamborghini and other luxuries.

But Abu, population 2,952, may be the only town on Earth where an entire COVID-19 stimulus fund vanished at the hands of an online gambler who received it through administrative error. The details of the case, and the rare attention from Japan’s national news media, have come as a shock to residents of the seaside town.

“I was surprised to hear the news and also amazed at how he spent the money,” said Yuriko Suekawa, 72, who has lived in Abu since she was born. “It’s truly unbelievable.”

The tale began April 8, when an official in Abu mistakenly asked a local bank to wire Taguchi 46.3 million yen, or about $358,000, said Atsushi Nohara, a town official. Taguchi’s name had been at the top of the list of 463 households that were each eligible for 100,000 yen as part of a national stimulus package.

After Abu officials realized the mistake, they immediately visited Taguchi and asked for the money back, the town’s mayor, Norihiko Hanada, said in an address on the town’s Youtube channel.

Taguchi agreed to travel with the officials to his bank in a government car, but he refused to enter the building and later said that he planned to consult a lawyer, according to public broadcaster NHK. Taguchi met with Abu’s deputy mayor April 14, NHK reported, and his lawyer told the town the next day that his client would return the money.

“But he ultimately did not do so,” Hanada said on Youtube. He said Taguchi eventually told town officials that he had spent the 46.3 million yen, would not run away and planned to “atone for the sin.”

Hanada has apologized to residents on behalf of the town for losing “such a precious and a large amount of public funds.”