Stolen $292,000 watch returned to Tokyo shop with apology
A Tokyo watch shop received an Audemars Piguet valued at $292,000 by courier days after it was stolen, along with a handwritten apology. The watch's return has not ended the police search for the man suspected of taking it, Japanese media reported.
Mariam Al Mansoori
Returned undamaged, but sender's details questioned
The package reached the shop in Tokyo's Nakano Broadway shopping complex on the morning of Nov. 1, 2026, according to investigative sources cited by The Asahi Shimbun. It had been sent from Aichi Prefecture and contained the watch and an apology note.
Employees verified the watch's identity by matching its serial number. The Asahi Shimbun reported that it was undamaged. Although the parcel listed a sender's name and address, investigators believe those details may be false.
The theft occurred around 8 p.m. on Oct. 29 at the third-floor shop. According to police and sources familiar with the investigation, a man asked to try on the watch, then ran out with it. Neither of the two employees present was injured.
Gulf News reported the watch's value as $292,000. The Asahi Shimbun's Nov. 2 report, citing Japanese investigative sources, gave an approximate value of 46 million yen, or roughly $291,000. Tokyo police are still working to identify and arrest the suspect.
An earlier theft at Nakano Broadway
The same shopping complex was the site of a separate watch theft in August. At 11:50 a.m. on Aug. 25, 2026, two men smashed a display case with a hammer near the entrance of a first-floor shop, The Asahi Shimbun reported. They took three Richard Mille watches and a Patek Philippe with a combined list price of about 200 million yen, or about $1.3 million.
Two Chilean nationals were arrested in Osaka Prefecture on Aug. 27 and later indicted over that theft. In a Sept. 29 report, The Asahi Shimbun said three of the four watches were still missing. One suspect, Manzano Quezada Boris Alexis, told investigators he had communicated through social media with a Spanish-speaking man and handed the watches to him in Osaka.
The two defendants were also rearrested on suspicion of involvement in an Aug. 22 home burglary in Tokyo's Ota Ward. That burglary involved three high-end watches and seven other items worth about 7.9 million yen, or about $50,000, according to the Sept. 29 report. Manzano Quezada told investigators he had heard that Japan's criminal punishments were light.
Security concerns and prevention advice
Commenting on the August Nakano Broadway case, Tokyo Metropolitan University criminal law professor Shuichiro Hoshi told The Asahi Shimbun that it broadly fit the pattern of an anonymous, loosely organized criminal group, known in Japan as "tokuryu." He also raised the possibility that overseas criminal groups were beginning to target Japan because they perceived its security as comparatively lax.
After the August theft, Tokyo police held a crime prevention session for watch retailers at Nakano Broadway, The Asahi Shimbun reported. Officers recommended displaying replicas or photographs instead of actual watches and showed owners how to apply special film to make display cases harder to smash.
