About 6,000 Shinano Gold apples, worth a total of 1.2 million, have been stolen from an orchard in Shiwa, Iwate Prefecture.
According to police and the orchard owner, the theft occurred some time between Oct 29 and Monday morning, Fuji TV reported. Police said the tracks of a small truck were found near the 70 trees where the apples were taken from.
The grower expressed anger at the theft, saying he had worked so hard and that the apples, which are often included in fruit gift sets, were ready to be picked.
Police said there has been an increasing number of fruit thefts this year.
© Japan Today
26 Comments
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noriahojanen
I doubt it. Such a large-scale theft of agriproducts across rural areas in an organized manner is a new, emerging phenomenon in Japan. Perhaps a theft insurance may sell well if arranged though preventive measures should be taken primarily.
kurisupisu
How many Japanese farmers own small trucks ?
Many
How many Vietnamese?
None!
Sal Affist
For apples "ready to be picked", the farmer did not tend the orchard at all for a 96-hour period? It's as if his neighbors knew he'd be away in a different orchard or on some business trip out of town.
I'm sorry to be a skeptic, but does JA insure against crop thefts? If they do, I hope their investigators dig into the reasons for his lack of attention to his crop right at harvest time.
Realization
Here suspect is ?
Is there any idea?
AlternativeOpinion
@Goodlucktoyou
Whole point of being a gangster is easy money without the hard work. Don't see demolition, construction or picking apples as a choice they would prefer. Easier for them to get some poor suckers to do the work.
moonbloom
GoodlucktoyouToday 10:08 am JST
@marcus
i sometimes saw these low loser yankee yakuza wannabes selling fruit or knock-off fashion bags in Osaka.
being yakuza is not so profitable now(excluding real estate), so to keep the young ones, they need to pay them. Choice is demolition, construction or apples.
Yes.
duncanpa
Some of the 'premium' Japanese fruit were so tasteless, in my experience, that you could well replace them with wax copies, maybe slightly flavored. However, I can't really tell whether this applies to the specific apples.
Hawkeye
Too bad. I especially love Fuji apples and my late J-wife was an excellent pastry chef. She made strudel or an old fashioned apple pie lightly dusted with cinnamon powder and confectionary sugar with a hot cup of black tea, yum, yum. Hope they find the thieves and make them peel every apple in the jail's kitchen.
factchecker
How d'ya like dem apples. Quite a lot it turns out.
Joed
Vietnamese group again?
Mlodinow
oops...misread the article, the apples could have been stolen during the day it seems
Mlodinow
@kohakuebisu
I did summer work at an orchard in university. As these are "premium" apples I'm guessing the trees are well maintained, so I would guess you could probably strip a tree in a few minutes if you didn't take much care of the tree & took every apple you could (instead of waiting until it's the correct ripeness. Not sure how many apples these trees hold but possibly around 20-30 per tree, so the operation wouldn't have taken long. You'd need night vision though, or at least minimal lighting to see what you're doing. It would be pretty dark in a well-sheltered orchard at night.
K3PO
A juicy opportunity, ripe with possibility.
Do the hustle
Must have been easy pickings (pun intended). Ten grand’s worth of apples? These thefts must be syndicated. Fencing 6,000 high-end apples is quite a task considering they’ll only have a shelf life of two weeks.
Goodlucktoyou
@marcus
i sometimes saw these low loser yankee yakuza wannabes selling fruit or knock-off fashion bags in Osaka.
being yakuza is not so profitable now(excluding real estate), so to keep the young ones, they need to pay them. Choice is demolition, construction or apples.
Marcus Clarke
Surely it would have to be someone in the industry, another farmer whose crops were damaged by weather or someone in the wholesale fruit market. with the ability to offload this fruitful haul?
Garthgoyle
Working so hard just so someone comes and reaps the fruit (literally) of all that time and effort you put into it. Hope they catch and totally destroy those involved.
kohakuebisu
How many people picking how many apples for how many hours? The logistics of this are quite impressive.
From the name, I thought Shinano Gold was a Nagano apple.
Goodlucktoyou
Picking apples is not easy. At least scum had to work for their money. Better than robbing old ladies.
tantanmen4life
risk reward seems way off! hard working criminals here. at least it isnt something dangerous like explosives, radioactive material or drugs
Nihonview
"This should be easy to find the criminals, you can't just sell 6000 apples without a company name"
Based on the recent news, we have strong idea who did it.
Nippori Nick
I think farmers might have to invest in guard dogs or similar.
Actually, some places in the world use guard geese. They really don't like intruders (but then again, they might like apples too much!)
sf2k
This should be easy to find the criminals, you can't just sell 6000 apples without a company name