Mizuho Bank Says ¥66 mil. Stolen from Safe Deposit Boxes as President Breaks His Silence on Former Employee’s Thefts

The Yomiuri Shimbun

16:24 JST, February 27, 2025

Mizuho Bank, Ltd. announced Thursday that its former employee stole ¥66 million from customers’ safe deposit boxes.

The former employee reportedly took cash from two customers’ deposit boxes in 2019.

“I’m very sorry that we have caused our customers anxiety,” President Masahiko Kato told reporters on Thursday morning. It was the first time Kato publicly spoke about the thefts.

On Feb. 18, the bank revealed the incident involving the former employee. As to why the bank had not disclosed the thefts for more than five years, Kato explained that there were customers who did not want the thefts to be made public and that no other customer had been harmed besides the two identified.

According to the bank, the former employee, a woman in her 30s who worked at the bank’s Hiroo branch at the time, stole cash from the safe deposit boxes from around January 2016 to June 2019. She illegally obtained spare keys kept at the branch under the guise of requests by the customers and opened their deposit boxes. She reportedly used the stolen money to buy clothes and travel. She was dismissed on disciplinary grounds in October 2019.

The bank has reimbursed the victims in full. All its branches were also checked and no similar incidents were found to have occurred since 2019, the bank said.

The bank also revealed that the former employee was arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department in 2021 on suspicion of filing false loan applications to get money from the bank between 2017 and 2019. The bank reported this case at the time.