Man sent to prison for embezzling money for karaoke

An Elk Grove Village man who spent on karaoke bars thousands of dollars that he embezzled was sentenced to 21 months in prison Wednesday.

Kenji Nakamura, 50, was an employee of a Japanese company, Nankai Transport International, a shipping company with an office in Elk Grove Village.

Nakamura's attorney, Maritza Martinez, told U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly that part of Japan's culture of entertaining current and prospective business clients played a role in his theft.

"He was entertaining people. He was establishing business relationships, taking them to karaoke bars," said Martinez.

In the course of those visits, Nakamura sometimes rang up $1,700 or $2,000 tabs in a single visit. He also became an alcoholic in the process, Martinez said.

Nakamura had signature authority over some of Nankai's accounts and was entitled to some reimbursement for legitimate entertainment and travel expenses. But he was required to forward any personal expenses he authorized to the company's Los Angeles office, according to his plea agreement.

Instead, he often did not seek authorization and sometimes created phony invoices between 2001 and 2004 for nonexistent packaging expenses to cover his trail, his plea agreement said.

In mentioning the karaoke visits, Martinez was responding to a question by Kennelly, who was curious as to how much of the $203,906.09 Nakamura embezzled he might have rationalized as being "owed" to him by the company.

Of that amount, Nakamura has already repaid over $91,000. Kennelly complimented him on that effort and correspondingly reduced his sentence below the minimum 27 months sentence recommended by federal guidelines.

But Kennelly also noted that not all of Nakamura's thefts could be written off as rationalizations of money owed to him by the company. The fact that Nakamura covered up the thefts showed he knew it was wrong, Kennelly said.

Kennelly also agreed with Assistant U.S. Attorney Madeleine Murphy, who opposed further leniency requested because Nakamura's college-aged daughter would be left without a parent in the U.S.

Martinez said Nakamura was extremely sorry for the embarrassment he caused his daughter and his company.

"He's owned up to his mistakes, and he's trying to do right," said Martinez.