Photo/Illutration Masahito Kondo arrives at Kasuya Police Station in Fukuoka Prefecture on Oct. 13. (Amane Ogatsu)

FUKUOKA--A man in his 60s who was arrested after tricking a school into hiring him with a forged teacher’s license had a history of faking teaching credentials, police said.

He was also involved in a child prostitution case in 2005 that led to his dismissal from a school.

The Fukuoka prefectural police announced the arrest of 66-year-old Masahito Kondo on Oct. 13. Kondo had been working as an assistant teacher at a municipal junior high school in the town of Sue in the prefecture.

He admitted to using counterfeit official documents.

According to investigative sources, Kondo is believed to have worked in education in Kyushu and the Kanto region using either revoked or forged teaching licenses.

In late January, police said Kondo applied for an assistant teaching position at a school in Sue and submitted a copy of a forged junior high school teaching license to the town’s education board.

The copy had Kondo’s name printed on it, but the license number belonged to another individual.

Police searched Kondo’s home on Oct. 13. Based on items seized during the search, police said they decided to pursue their suspicions about the fake official document.

According to the town’s education board, a teaching license is not legally required for assistant teachers. However, the board requests submission of a license as part of its efforts to ensure education quality.

Kondo was hired in April to assist with after-school supplementary math lessons and supervise students during periods when they clean their classrooms.

In mid-September, a parent reported to school authorities that Kondo made an inappropriate comment to a female student on one such occasion.

He apparently told the student she “looked erotic.”

The parent did some online sleuthing and reached the conclusion Kondo had previously taught without a valid license.

In response, the school requested the original license for verification. Kondo gave a vague excuse about not having it on hand. The school then placed him on stay-at-home leave and consulted with the prefectural police.

According to investigative sources and the government gazette, Kondo lost his teaching license in 2005 after he was involved in a child prostitution case. He later got the license back but lost it again in 2012.

PAST INCIDENTS

In 2013, Kondo concealed the matter of the revoked license to land a job at a junior high school in Saitama Prefecture. He was fined 600,000 yen ($3,935) by the Kumagaya Summary Court for violating the Education Personnel Certification Law.

After changing his surname, Kondo applied for a junior high school teaching position in Fukuoka Prefecture in 2014. He presented a forged license.

He was found guilty by the Iizuka Branch of the Fukuoka District Court of forging and using an official document for the purpose and given a 16-month prison term.

It was determined that he used an invalid license as a reference, scanned a seal from an authentic letter of appointment, and forged a new license

The court noted that the forgery was “so elaborate that it was indistinguishable from a genuine document at first glance,” significantly undermining public trust in teaching licenses.

In 2017, he was sentenced to two years and six months in prison by the Miyazaki District Court on similar charges.

According to the final judgment, Kondo applied for a temporary teaching position at a public junior high school in Miyazaki Prefecture in spring of that year. He submitted a copy of his revoked license under his former name with his new surname pasted over it.

In both the 2014 and 2017 cases, forgery was detected during the recruitment process.

(This article was written by Jun Sugie, Amane Ogatsu, Kiriko Nemoto and Mizuki Enomoto.）

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