The homeowners of the Rolexes and different dear timepieces earned month-to-month deposit charges by loaning them to Osaka-based Toke Match, which might then lease them to clients.
Neo Reverse, the corporate that operated Toke Match, introduced on January 31 the termination of its service and promised it could return all watches.
However the homeowners of round 900 watches price 1.9 billion yen ($12.6 million) haven’t been reunited with their property, the Asahi Shimbun every day and different media shops reported, citing a bunch of about 190 homeowners.
A few of the watches have even been noticed on an internet public sale web site, prompting homeowners to file dozens of complaints to police round Japan.
The public sale web site’s operator Valuence Japan advised AFP that at the least 20 watches it dealt with had serial numbers matching these loaned to Toke Match.
“We instantly stopped circulation of those watches to forestall additional damages from occurring” by reselling, a spokeswoman mentioned final week.
Half of the watches have been already on the public sale web site earlier than the Toke Match service was terminated, she mentioned.
The Sharing Financial system Affiliation, Japan mentioned in a press release that it had obtained studies that among the watches have been circulated in second-hand shops too.
The dimensions of Japan’s “sharing economic system” market is quickly rising, reaching 2.6 trillion yen ($17 billion) within the final fiscal 12 months, the affiliation says.
Neo Reverse was considered one of round 400 members of the organisation however was delisted on February 1 following complaints by the homeowners that their watches had not been returned.
Tokyo police have obtained an arrest warrant for Toke Match’s proprietor Takazumi Kominato, 42, on suspicion of embezzlement of a Rolex watch, Jiji Press reported Wednesday, citing investigative sources.
He’s suspected of promoting the Rolex he loaned from an proprietor to a second-hand seller for 650,000 yen in January, the report mentioned.
Nevertheless, Kominato flew out of Japan in late February for Dubai, and police plan to place him on the worldwide wished checklist, Jiji mentioned.