About 900 luxury watches worth nearly $13 million have gone missing in Japan after the site that rents them went bankrupt and its owner fled to Dubai, local media report.
Owners of Rolexes and other expensive watches earned monthly deposit fees by lending them to Osaka-based Toke Match, which then rented them out to customers.
Neo Reverse, the company that runs Toke Match, announced on January 31 the termination of its service and promised it would return all the watches.
But the owners of about 900 watches worth 1.9 billion yen ($12.6 million) have actually said goodbye to their property, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper and other media reported, citing a group of about 190 owners.
Some of the watches were even spotted on an online auction site, prompting owners to file dozens of complaints with police across Japan.
The operator of the auction site, Valuence Japan, told AFP that at least 20 of the watches it handled had serial numbers matching those loaned to Toke Match.
"We immediately stopped their distribution to prevent further damage through resale," a spokeswoman said last week.
"Half of the watches were already on the auction site before Toke Match's service was terminated," she added.
The Japan Sharing Economy Association said it had received reports that some of the watches were also being distributed to second-hand shops.
According to the association, the size of Japan's "sharing economy" market is growing rapidly and reached 2.6 trillion yen ($17 billion) in the last fiscal year.
Neo Reverse was one of about 400 members of the organisation, but was dropped from the list on February 1 after complaints from owners that their watches had not been returned.
Tokyo police have obtained an arrest warrant for Toke Match owner Takazumi Kominato, 42, on suspicion of embezzling a Rolex watch, investigation sources said.
He is suspected of selling the Rolex, which he borrowed from the owner, to a second-hand dealer for 650,000 yen in January, the report said.
However, Kominato flew from Japan to Dubai in late February and police plan to put him on an international wanted list. / BGNES
