9 Japanese Police Officers Suspected of Online Casino Gambling

Jiji Press

9:58 JST, December 23, 2025

Kobe, Dec. 23 (Jiji Press)—The prefectural police department of Hyogo, western Japan, has sent papers on nine male officers to public prosecutors for alleged illegal gambling at online casinos.

On Monday, the police department imposed penalties on the nine officers, such as pay cuts and six-month suspension from duties.

All of them are suspected of engaging in online casino gambling outside work hours, according to investigative sources. One of them said, “I should have understood that online casino gambling is a crime before I did it.”

According to the police department’s inspection office, six of the nine were deployed at the same police station, and one of them, a senior police officer in his 20s, accessed an online casino website on his smartphone between December last year and June this year, betting more than 3,000 times and spending a total of about ¥5 million . The senior officer heard about the site from an officer in his 20s.

The other three include a senior police officer in his 30s who belonged to the criminal investigation bureau at the police department’s headquarters in Kobe, the capital of the prefecture.

In addition, the police department slapped nine men, including an officer in his 40s who has the rank of inspector and is deployed at the headquarters, with penalties such as six-month suspension for drinking alcohol or playing “pachinko” pinball during work hours. Their bosses also faced punishments.

“Taking seriously the fact that many officers were punished for irregularities, we will strengthen education on work ethics for our staff,” Koichi Tsuchiyama, chief of the inspection office said.