There was a rumor that the bank is covered by insurance, and some people said they got the reimbursement. However, it’s hard to get the money, and anyway, you won’t be able to get all of it back.
What happened? At 8:33 AM on November 22nd (Sat), three robbers barged into the Shinsei Bank in Shinkai-Cho, Katsushika City. Their clothes were like construction workers’. They had hammers and fake gunshot-proof vests which looked real under their jackets. The men smashed the glass walls, forced the customers down at gunpoint, took their cell phones away from them, and emptied cash register boxes. Finally, one of them draws a silver revolver towards a female teller demanding authenticity cards for money transfer to a bank in Beijing.
The robbers took about 10 minutes altogether and escaped by a white van with a sham license plate. They were driving without lights on, going over 80km/h towards the Koganei highway. A witness said he saw them drive right past him at 120km/h. Another witness confirmed that they went up the wrong way on an exit ramp from the Seibu line at incalculable speed, causing another car crash. It is unknown whether the occupants of the other car were injured. Still, if they are alive, it is not thought to be life-threatening given their lack of hospitalization after being hit head-on by a speeding van going backward down an offramp.
The police investigation continues into the case.
Why do banks sell insurance?
Banks sell insurance for your convenience. In the event of a robbery, you’d be reimbursed for all cash taken from your account.
In addition, some banks sell prepaid cards that people can buy in advance and with which they can have money instantly transferred into their accounts in case of an emergency or sudden accident. The bank may even pay back the fees if someone is unlucky enough to break a hip in a toilet fall while on a stroll in a park with vending machines nearby.
Why wasn’t there an announcement? Unfortunately, it is impossible to make announcements about bank customers’ personal affairs over the PA system at the ATM. However, it is possible to play messages through individual periscope-like speakers installed at each TV monitor display informing customers which ATM is currently out of order.
Why was the handgun fake? First, a 25-year older man claims that he bought it on Yahoo! Auction for only ¥4,000 (a bargain not to be missed). Also, there are rumors that handguns were given out as prizes at pachinko parlors and even-handed out by sponsors during school athletic meets.
The police urge people to stay calm and remove all firearms from their homes unless they permit.
How do banks and insurance companies make money?
The bank will be reimbursed for the cost of stolen money. The insurance company is just returning itself because it is saving on not paying out any claims, so their profits are simply the difference between premiums and reimbursements.
What does this mean? It could mean that your account balance can go negative because you don’t even know when someone steals money from your account, or it may be understating terrible news. There were no injuries reported, but that’s because nobody saw what was happening outside of their shattered windows. Insurance companies also have a history of using all the loopholes to avoid paying people the money they owe them. Banks do, too, but there are more legal restrictions against banks doing it than insurance companies, hence why they constantly have to come up with new ways to make money.
Why do people pay for insurance? Insurance is a protection racket because you are forced by law to pay premiums whether or not anyone ever makes an insurance claim against you. This means that you are paying for something no matter what happens, even if nobody does anything wrong to you or your property. You may think that’s fair – at least it’s cheap – but why should the state use threats of violence under color of law to force us all into buying things we don’t want?
Is this place near where they filmed Tokyo Godfathers? No, Tokyo Godfathers were shot in Shibuya and Setagaya-Ku, not Katsushika City. However, there was another film shot in Katsushika called The Woodsman and the Rain, which was about a lumberjack’s life rustling trees for the paper, I believe.
Didn’t you run away from your family? You might be thinking of Ruroni Kenshin, where the main character runs away at age ten to find his father. It is scarce for people to run away from home these days, but this incident may change that.
Why wasn’t there any announcement on the PA system?
There are two sets of statements that could have been made: one by management over the loudspeaker inside each ATM room telling customers why they couldn’t withdraw money, and another about which ATMs were out of order plastered onto every single TV monitor screen inside every single ATM.
There were no announcements for security reasons. A report was made, but it said that the ATMs were out of order, not that there had been a robbery or anything like that.
The handgun was fake. A 25-year-old man claims to have bought it on Yahoo! Auction (a Japanese website like E-Bay) for only ¥4,000 (a bargain not to be missed). This is true because they included his name and address in the report, which would never happen if he wasn’t telling them the truth about buying it online somewhere. It’s also possible that handguns are given as prizes at pachinko parlors and handed out by sponsors during school athletic meets because none of those things are illegal.
Police urge people to stay calm and remove all firearms from their homes unless they have a permit. If you don’t, the police will come in and take them away without warning because there is no need for one. The reason you could get your gun back if it’s legal isn’t that the police are friendly but rather that they can’t possibly do the paperwork for every single one of Japan’s 120 million guns, so they prioritize the illegal ones, hence why people who buy guns illegally should be more concerned than anyone else.
