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Ayane Okutani, 24, of Shiraoi, Hokkaido, has been arrested for a daring daylight robbery of a convenience store from which she managed to take about 1.9 million yen. However, this robbery wasn’t “daring” in the sense of guns and knives or a high-speed car chase; rather it took a different kind of courage to pull off.
According to the investigation, Okutani allegedly entered a convenience store in Ichinomiya City, Aichi Prefecture, in April, and approached the clerk on duty. Telling the woman she was a newly hired part-time worker, Okutani was led behind the counter and given a uniform, which she also stole.
Over the next hour and 20 minutes, Okutani is accused of taking the large sum of cash from the shop’s safe and registers before fleeing the scene. However, that was plenty of time for the store’s numerous security cameras to get a nice long look at her and make an excellent starting point for the ensuing police investigation.
They eventually made the arrest and Okutani is said to have admitted to the crime, and despite having her plans foiled, netizens were still quick to admire her chutzpah.
“I think that’s genius!”
“She’s like Lupin.”
“Wow she must have ice water running through her veins to pull that off.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I feel bad for the victims… but that’s an amazing crime.”
“Nice try, but there was no way around the cameras.”
“Who’d have thought there was so much money in a convenience store?”
In addition to the large sum of money that happened to be there at the time, there is a lot about this theft that would indicate the suspect had an intimate knowledge of the way convenience stores work. For example, she must have been quite familiar with the staff turnover to expect to be welcomed as one so easily.
Because of this, her overall nerves of steel, and the fact she was cautious enough to hit a store over 1,200 kilometers away from home, police are suspecting that this is not her first attempt and are investigating Okutani’s connection to other convenience store robberies around Japan.
Sources: Tokai TV News One, Hachima Kiko
Read more stories from SoraNews24.
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© SoraNews24
22 Comments
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Yubaru
Poor assumption here, as if she really DID have intimate knowledge of how they work she would also have known about the security cameras as well.
She just had more guts than brains.
kurisupisu
Maybe, she wanted to get caught?
Laguna
If anything, she's got some rice balls.
Do the hustle
The dumbest smart person! It’s a bold and quite clever idea, but destined to fail because of security cameras. Did she actually believe sh would get away with it?
Strangerland
I think it's pretty common knowledge that convenience stores have cameras everywhere. I'm thinking that may be why she was doing this half way across the country rather than near her home. I could be wrong though - maybe she really is just dumb as a post.
commanteer
1200 km from home, she might have tried altering her appearance slightly (by wearing glasses, for example) and figured no one in the area would recognize here.
seif
even without the security cameras, her fingerprints would be everywhere. as for the other employee, shouldn't she be notified in case there's a new part timer coming.
Kobe White Bar Owner
@Laguna
Them rice balls are the size of water melons hey!
Alexandre T. Ishii
That's exactly a scene of Mr. Bean in woman's version.
TrevorPeace
A girl I'd love to meet.
Pukey2
I think that genius??????!!!!!!
This woman didn't even know there were cameras everywhere, for god's sake!
Jonathan Prin
I wonder how they managed to catch her if never caught before. Facial recogntion ?
So she kept her face the same ? No genius...
And about combini management, so I laughed as about half the population must have worked in a combini in their life !
Yubaru
And unless she had been arrested for something somewhere she would have gotten away with it.
therougou
I don't, no harm done, and the store is stupid for letting a stranger walk in, pretend to work there, and have immediate access to their safe.
Strangerland
I'd be surprised if the police checked a combini for finger prints. There would be so many prints from people visiting the store, any prints would be pretty useless.
Yeah, considering we see so many occurrences of this crime, week in week out, year in year out, it's stupid that every convenience store wouldn't have measures to protect this crime that happens all the time. They deserve to be robbed.
garypen
It was obviously a crime of convenience.
seif
I don't think the customers will leave their fingerprints on the store safe or the cash registers
Strangerland
Only all the other staff. Which at the average combini is quite a few. So each of those people would have to give fingerprints in order to eliminate them as possibilities.
MadameD
I guess it wasn't her first attemp to be so bold. Maybe she knew if she did it far from home she could get away with it.
Japanese police can be so lame and lazy sometimes.
HARRYO
SMART Girl, But you got caught .... Hope it was worth it. Now comes the rest of your life .... Hope you can deal with the repercussions of your actions. stealing what's not yours is not the right thing to do. Work for the things that you want.