Ex-head of resignation assistance firm gets suspended sentence
The Tokyo District Court found Shinji Tanimoto and his wife, Shiori, guilty of earning profit from referring customers to lawyers without a license to practice law.
The former head of Albatross, a resignation assistance firm, and his wife were sentenced to suspended prison terms for illegally referring customers to lawyers. On Friday, the Tokyo District Court found Shinji Tanimoto, 37, guilty and sentenced him to two years in prison, suspended for three years. His wife, Shiori Tanimoto, 32, received an 18-month suspended sentence.
The court labeled this a "large-scale and professional crime" that jeopardizes the fair operation of the lawyer system. Albatross was also fined ¥2 million. The couple allegedly disregarded legal compliance for the sake of profit, even while being aware of the risks involved. Public prosecutors argued that the defendants profited by arranging lawyers for customers facing issues with their employers, such as unpaid wages, in exchange for referral fees.
The court found that Tanimoto and his wife referred 174 customers to two lawyers between June 2023 and February 2025, earning ¥16,500 per customer under the guise of donations from nominal labor unions of customers' companies.
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