Hard times hit organized crime in Japan - New York Post

Organized crime apparently doesn’t pay in Japan.

Members of the country’s notorious yakuza crime syndicate are so strapped for cash that they’ve resorted to shoplifting food, according to Agence France-Presse.

Two thugs were collared for stealing almost $700 worth of groceries at a mall in Nagoya, police said Wednesday.

“They are members of an affiliated gang group of the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi,” a police spokesman said, referring to a group that split off in 2015 from Japan’s biggest yakuza crime syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi.

The gangsters, aged 52 and 59, tried to steal 198 items including a watermelon, rice and eel in the company of their gang boss, the Asahi and Mainichi dailies reported.

One of the suspects told police that “the group is so poor” members have to steal food, the Mainichi said.

The yakuza developed into multibillion-dollar criminal group involved in everything from gambling, drugs and prostitution to loan sharking, protection rackets and white-collar crime.

They were tolerated because they maintained order on the streets and accomplished things quickly – despite their dubious means.

But declining social tolerance, along with a struggling economy and plummeting memberships have hurt their bottom line.

Stricter anti-gang laws also are making life miserable as regular businesses are banned from dealing with mobsters, who struggle to open bank accounts or receive mail at their offices.

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