In Fukushima, Shuto has faced at least two claims with local labor regulators over unpaid wages, according to Kaneda. In a separate case, a 55-year-old homeless man reported being paid the equivalent of $10 for a full month of work at Shuto. The worker's paystub, reviewed by Reuters, showed charges for food, accommodation and laundry were docked from his monthly pay equivalent to about $1,500, leaving him with $10 at the end of the August.
The man turned up broke and homeless at Sendai Station in October after working for Shuto, but disappeared soon afterwards, according to Yasuhiro Aoki, a Baptist pastor and homeless advocate.
Kaneda confirmed the man had worked for her but said she treats her workers fairly. She said Shuto Kogyo pays workers at least $80 for a day's work while docking the equivalent of $35 for food. Many of her workers end up borrowing from her to make ends meet, she said. One of them had owed her $20,000 before beginning work in Fukushima, she says. The balance has come down recently, but then he borrowed another $2,000 for the year-end holidays.
"He will never be able to pay me back," she said.
The problem of workers running themselves into debt is widespread. "Many homeless people are just put into dormitories, and the fees for lodging and food are automatically docked from their wages," said Aoki, the pastor. "Then at the end of the month, they're left with no pay at all."
Shizuya Nishiyama, 57, says he briefly worked for Shuto clearing rubble. He now sleeps on a cardboard box in Sendai Station. He says he left after a dispute over wages, one of several he has had with construction firms, including two handling decontamination jobs.
Nishiyama's first employer in Sendai offered him $90 a day for his first job clearing tsunami debris. But he was made to pay as much as $50 a day for food and lodging. He also was not paid on the days he was unable to work. On those days, though, he would still be charged for room and board. He decided he was better off living on the street than going into debt.
"We're an easy target for recruiters," Nishiyama said. "We turn up here with all our bags, wheeling them around and we're easy to spot. They say to us, are you looking for work? Are you hungry? And if we haven't eaten, they offer to find us a job."
(Reporting by Mari Saito and Antoni Slodkowski, additional reporting by Elena Johansson, Michio Kohno, Yoko Matsudaira, Fumika Inoue, Ruairidh Villar, Sophie Knight; writing by Kevin Krolicki; editing by Bill Tarrant)
6-6
Tokyo police arrest 16 over yakuza-linked health insurance fraud
JIJI Nov 7, 2015 Japan Times
Tokyo police have arrested a total of 16 gangsters and others on charges of swindling municipal governments out of public health insurance money.
The arrested include Keitaro Mito, 49, boss of a group affiliated with the Tokyo-based Sumiyoshi-kai, a major yakuza crime syndicate, and Kazuo Hayakawa, 38, an executive at an information technology-related company.
The Metropolitan Police Department arrested Mito and 13 others Friday afternoon. Two more suspects were nabbed later.
On Saturday, police raided the Sumiyoshi-kai’s head office in Minato Ward as well as eight other sites.
According to the MPD, Mito and the others have been charged with defrauding four municipalities, including Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward, of about \450,000 by filing for public health insurance payments on fake practices at an orthopedic clinic in the capital between August 2011 and June 2013.
The clinic, which closed in October 2013, filed insurance claims totaling some \27 million to cover service costs for about 350 patients during its two years in operation.
Authorities suspect that among those claims, there are more bogus ones that have not yet been uncovered, investigative sources said.
The sources also said that Mito’s group is believed to have carried out similar schemes with other orthopedic and dental clinics in Tokyo and Chiba Prefecture, possibly defrauding municipalities of as much as \100 million in total. The money likely went into Sumiyoshi-kai coffers, they added.
