Four employees of a Toyota sales subsidiary were arrested Tuesday for falsely registering colleagues and relatives as the owners of cars the firm kept in stock in a bid to pad the number of used cars they sold, police were quoted as saying.
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A former manager of Osaka Toyota’s used car sales division and three others are accused of making false entries in officially authenticated electronic records, according to Mainichi Daily News.
The report said prefectural police investigators raided the company’s headquarters in Fukushima-ku, Osaka, its used car sales centre and six other locations on Tuesday.
The four reportedly admitted to the allegations during questioning. “I wanted to make it look as if I had achieved my sales target,” one of them was quoted as telling investigators.
Maninichi said Osaka Toyota expressed regret over the incident. “We are taking the incident seriously and will fully cooperate with law enforcement authorities in their investigations.”
The report said investigators said suspects falsely registered colleagues and relatives as the owners of four used cars the firm had with the local transport bureau to make it look as if they had sold the vehicles to them.
Apparently, this is just the tip of the iceberg, according to the report. An in-house investigation conducted by Osaka Toyota has proven that 111 employees were involved in the false sales and registrations of 238 used vehicles at its 14 branches over a five-year period until March this year.
