'Stressed out': Woman arrested after cancelling ₹258 crore worth of online orders

Police in Tokyo, Japan have arrested a woman for repeatedly ordering large quantities of merchandise from a popular online store and then cancelling the orders.

Published on: Aug 7, 2026, 15:39:50 IST

By Sanya Jain

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Police in Tokyo, Japan have arrested a woman for repeatedly ordering large quantities of merchandise from a popular online store and then cancelling the orders. The accused, named Mayu Yoshida, placed over 2,000 orders on the online store of anime company Shueisha by using fake accounts and aliases.

The Japanese woman placed over 2,000 orders online.

According to the Japanese news outlet Nippon TV News 24, the 32-year-old woman used over 230 fake accounts to place the orders. Between 2024 and 2025, she ordered Naruto and One Piece merchandise worth between approximately 4.3 billion yen ($2.7 million USD or ₹258 crore INR approximately).

Yoshida cancelled the orders after they were shipped and never paid for them.

The how and the why

According to a report by Sankei Shimbun, the orders were placed using cash on delivery as the payment method. When the orders arrived at Yoshida’s doorstep, she refused to accept them. In some cases, she cancelled the orders after placing them and before they were even shipped.

As a result of her actions, Shueisha is said to have incurred losses of about 7.5 million yen ($47,500), with shipping expenses contributing to the total.

(Also read: 'We were not aware': Indian woman caught shoplifting during group trip to Japan)

The Japanese woman admitted to the charges, claiming she was “stressed out from daily life”.

"I love anime in general, so placing these orders satisfied that desire,” she said. She also told investigators that these anime shopping sprees helped her cope with the stress of everyday life.

Her scheme came to light when the company reported the damages to the Kanda Police Station in June 2025. Yoshida was arrested on August 4 this year, following a police investigation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sanya Jain
Sanya Jain is an Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times Digital. She has nearly a decade of experience in covering offbeat stories that speak to the everyday experience - from viral videos to human interest copies that spark conversation. Her interests stretch across business, pop culture, social media trends, entertainment and global affairs. Before joining Hindustan Times, Sanya spent two years with Moneycontrol and five years with NDTV. She holds an undergraduate degree in English literature from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and a master’s in journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai. Sanya has a sharp eye for spotting emerging trends and looking for newsworthy angles to elevate viral posts into meaningful narratives. She was the first one, for example, to cover Narayana Murthy’s remark on 70-hour work weeks that sparked a national conversation. She is equally at ease writing about business leaders as about the common man, about issues of national importance and memes that amuse social media. Sanya enjoys speaking with content creators, newsmakers and entrepreneurs to transform everyday moments into engaging, slice-of-life stories that resonate with readers. When she is not working, Sanya can be found curled up with a good book. Born and raised in Lucknow, she has spent the last several years in Delhi. She is deeply interested in animal welfare and now spends a lot of her time running after her destructive orange cat.Read More

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