How do you hide $55
million dollars?
Hatsue and Yoshiko were the
daughters of a very wealthy man. One day they would
inherit his fortune. They would pay a very
large tax bill.
‘It’s not fair,’ their father told
them. ‘It’s your money.’
‘But what can we do?’
‘Take the money out now,’ he told them.
‘Then it won’t be there when I die.’
The sisters began taking money out of their father’s
bank accounts.
‘We’ll hide it at home,’ Hatsue told
Yoshiko. ‘That way the tax authorities won’t
know about it.’
Where's the
money?
Every month they withdrew
large amounts of money in cash. And when their father died
there was very little left money in his bank accounts.
The sisters only needed to declare only a small part of the
family fortune. They did not mention that they also had
nearly 58 million US dollars in new bank notes.
But the tax authorities became suspicious. Their father had
been a very successful property developer. Where was all
his money?
‘He spent it all!’ said the sisters.
The tax authorities remained unconvinced. And when the
police investigated, they soon discovered the missing
millions.
‘They hid most of the money in cash in a shed
attached to Hatsue's house,’ an Osaka tax official
said. ‘We have confiscated 50 cardboard boxes packed
with cash.’
I
Forgot
When the police found the boxes
of bank notes, Hatsue looked surprised: ‘I had
forgotten about that money,’ she said. ‘I put
it there when I was tidying up the house.’
For some reason the police didn’t believe her. They
charged the sisters with the biggest tax evasion in
Japanese history.
