Japanese police have searched the city hall of the prefectural capital of Toyama, central Japan, over the suspected padding of the city’s population for the 2025 national census.
Ten investigators from the Toyama prefectural police entered the Toyama City Hall on Saturday morning for a search of the division that handles the census.
Police say they searched for three hours and seized documents related to the census, as well as records of internal communications.
The move comes after the national internal affairs ministry filed a criminal complaint with the prefectural police on Tuesday over a suspected violation of the Statistics Act.
The ministry alleges that unidentified Toyama City staff overreported the city’s population in the census last year, by adding households with no actual residents.
The ministry and…
This category refers to crimes committed by employees or insiders against their own organizations. It is often the most damaging because the perpetrator has authorized access to systems.
- Asset Misappropriation: The most common form, involving the theft of company resources. This ranges from simple “skimming” (taking cash before it’s recorded) to complex schemes involving the theft of inventory or intellectual property.
- Payroll Fraud: Employees may create “ghost employees” on the system, falsify their own timesheets to claim unworked overtime, or divert salary payments to their own accounts.
- Financial Statement Fraud: Management deliberately misrepresents the company’s financial health by inflating revenue or hiding liabilities to attract investors or meet performance bonuses.