Unexpected objects found inserted into these love dolls.
At the risk of being graphic, the whole point of love dolls is to insert things into them. However, the authorities in Japan were displeased when they came across a shipment of imported love dolls that had already been stuffed with something: smuggled gold.
On June 22, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police announced the arrest of a group of six men and women on smuggling charges. The group is accused of arranging for the shipment of sex dolls from China to Japan in January of this year. The dolls were sent by air freight from China’s Shenzhen Airport to Narita Airport in Japan, with a final shipping address to a condominium in Tokyo’s Arakawa Ward, but were intercepted by customs officials along the way.
Inside three love dolls were networks of cylindrical containers with gold bullion inside. The total weight of the precious metals was roughly 49 kilograms (180 pounds), with a market value of approximately 1.075 billion yen (US$7 million).
▼ The smuggling cylinders can be seen at the point in the video queued here.
It’s not illegal to ship sex dolls or gold into Japan, but they carry vastly different taxes and other fees. Investigators allege that by declaring that the shipments were simply “mannequins,” the suspected smugglers would have evaded some 110 million yen in fees legally required to bring that much gold into Japan. Had the shipment made it to its intended destination, the police believe that the next step would have been to dismantle the dolls, remove the bullion, then reform it into new ingots at the workplace of a Chinese resident of Kamagaya, Chiba Prefecture (who is also accused of arranging for the initial shipment of gold from China), with the ultimate goal of selling the ingots. The police believe that the group has smuggled gold into Japan through this same method multiple times before.
Regardless of whether or not the suspects are convicted of the crime, it seems pretty clear that someone was trying to smuggle gold into Japan, and the bullion is likely to be confiscated by the Japanese government. As for the love dolls, it’s unclear what their fate will be once they’re done being used as evidence, but maybe funerals can be arranged for them through Japan’s love doll memorial service.
Source: Nitele News, TBS News Dig, Mainichi Shimbun
Top image: Pakutaso
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