A 34-year-old mother from Osaka, Japan has been arrested for allegedly starving her 9-year-old daughter as part of a JPY5.7 million insurance payout scam.
Police arrested Kasumi Nawata last week for allegedly defrauding JPY60,000 from mutual aid associations by starving her daughter, causing the child to be hospitalized due to low blood sugar. Investigators now believe that Nawata frequently starved her child, resulting in 43 hospitalizations for a total of 332 days since spring of 2018.
During this period, Nawata claimed JPY5.69 million in insurance claims from three institutions. According to a report from Japan Times, authorities also suspect that Nawata has been feeding laxatives to her daughter to prolong her stay at the hospitals, resulting in higher insurance claims.
Of the 43 hospitalizations, 39 were at the same hospital, with each costing about JPY40,000. Nawata is suspected to have been using the collected insurance payment for expenses like dining out and beauty salon services.
Nawata has been arrested three times prior on suspicion of starving her daughter and forcing her to take laxatives and cause bodily harm. The Osaka District Public Prosecutors’ Office has indicted her twice. Her latest warrant, bringing the total to four, accuses her of claiming fraudulent insurance payments from a mutual aid association by having her daughter admitted to a hospital in Osaka for six days, starting Jan. 22.
The suspect has since denied the charges; while she has admitted to filing an insurance claim, she claimed that she did so with no intention to deceive and that she did not intentionally cause her daughter to have low blood sugar.
Since Feb. 9, the daughter has been temporarily placed under the care of child welfare authorities, and an official from Osaka confirmed that her life is not in any danger.
Elsewhere in the country, used car dealership Bigmotor is facing a massive scandal after reports broke out of company-wide insurance fraud that had employees causing damage to customers’ cars to inflate claims.
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