Suspect was caught red-tab-handed with one-of-a-kind vintage jeans.
A 22-year-old man from Toyonaka City, Osaka Prefecture was arrested for grand theft jeans on 15 February, after he allegedly stole a pair worth 159,840 yen (US$1,450) from a secondhand clothing store in neighboring Osaka City.
The part-time worker was apparently looking to make one big heist in terms of shoplifting clothes and went for the granddaddy of them all: a pair of imported jeans from the 1930s still in very good condition. On top of that, these jeans are said to be the only ones of their kind in Japan. Truly these were the Maltese Falcon of jeans.
Exactly how the suspect allegedly bypassed the sophisticated laser security system that we presume guarded the coveted jeans is unclear, but they were successfully wrangled somehow on the afternoon of February 14.
The suspect is believed to have taken his blue booty to another secondhand shop in a different part of town in an attempt to sell them. Now this is where his plan ran into a fatal flaw. The problem with trying to sell stolen one-of-a-kind goods is that they are one of a kind and therefore very easy to trace.
In fact, without even trying, the shop staff had stumbled on the truth. At a loss to know how much money to give the man for these very rare pants, they consulted the Internet. Online they could only find one store in Japan that had the pants and called them up to ask what a good price to offer would be.
However, the victimized store informed them that those were the only pants in Japan and had very recently been stolen from there. The shopkeeper then called police and stalled the “customer” by telling him that it was especially difficult to appraise the jeans and it would take more time.
The authorities arrived soon after and made the arrest. The suspect is said to have admitted to the crime saying he had planned to resell them for a quick profit. And he would have gotten away with it too if it hand’t been for that meddling Internet and its dog!
I think we can all learn some valuable lessons from this. Firstly, crime doesn’t pay, no matter how entertainingly original it is. But more importantly, jeans are apparently a lucrative collector’s item, so keep that in mind next time you’re Konmari-ing your closet.
Source: Yomiuri Online
Top image: SoraNews24