Dear Flau music listeners and all supporters of our label,

On September 24th 2017, we announced the unfortunate news about the burglary by Akihito Saito, a musician whose stage name is AMETSUB, and is also the owner of the record label Nothings66.

As mentioned before, Saito broke into our label’s headquarters twice in July and September 2017, and he was arrested as the suspect and indicted for alleged infringement of the housebreaking and larceny.
He stole our office/residence address in Tokyo from our distributer, looked up the structure of the residence online, investigated the day when we were absent and broke into the residence on July 7th last year.

He broke the window of our balcony using a claw bar to unlock it and broke into the room, and took more than 900 items including cash, mass stock of CD, vinyl, equipment, PC, hard disk, musical instruments, passport, clothes and etc… He transported them to his home three times by a car.

At the second crime on September 18th, Saito burned the window glass with a gas burner, opened a hole, put his hand in to unlocked the window, broke into our residence and took cash, musical instruments, CD’s, computer equipment and others. He sold these items under names of music related acquaintance without permission at AMAZON, Disk Union, Yahoo auctions, Grailed etc. and made profits.

Saito harassed us by placing a large amount of water when he broke into our office and putting adhesive into the keyhole of the entrance. After the crime, some stolen items were disposed as combustible waste to destroy the evidence, and he hid CD’s and computer equipment with his staff of the record label Nothings66.

Alongside the above criminal case, we attempted negotiation through our representatives (attorneys) to return the stolen HDs, a stock of CDs, gears and other items, as well as to delete malignant comments which he made anonymously on internet that were directed to us and people concerned with flau. He made comments which expose our personal information and significantly hurt our reputation.
Saito’s malignant actions, such as his premeditated crime (burgling in while we are absent for touring), selling musical gears and HDs (with its contents deleted completely), exposing personal pictures of label artist on Instagram using multiple anonymous accounts, significantly disrupting the feelings of the artist, are not easy to forgive. However, following the advice from our attorney and going through investigation and court, we decided to settle both criminal and civil cases out of court in order to prevent the same aggravated cases to happen again.

The followings are what was agreed on the settlement document.

– Acknowledge and apologize about the fact he burgled.
– Acknowledge and apologize the fact he sold flau’s possessions on Yahoo Auction, Rakuten market, FRIL, Disk Union, Merukari, and Amazon.
– Acknowledge and apologize the fact he exposed personal information about flau’s artists on internet.
– Acknowledge and apologize the fact that he posted pictures of a flau artist on Instagram.
– Acknowledge the fact that he was telling a factually incorrect information about how flau treated an artist unfairly to a number of people in the music industry, and deeply apologize.
– Pay for the settlement money.
– Collaborate with our attorney to specify the locations of stolen items, such as submitting the documents about where they went,
– Delete every internet posts which mention people affiliated with flau.
-Make a pledge that you will not make any abusive comments, defamation or anything similar to that to flau and/or flau affiliates both off and on the internet through Social network media including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and any websites.

-and more

Considering the above out-of-court settlement and Saito’s apologetic attitude, as well as his decision to stay out of music work, on March 3, 2018, Saito was sentenced 2 and 6 months in prison and 3 years probation.

We restrained from making this announcement right after the court case was settled, because we were afraid the announcement would make people even more worried. We were also concerned if there could be a secondary damage to both victims and the perpetrator. However, since there was information about Saito anonymously returning to the music scene, it made the label affiliates difficult to participate in events and concerts. There was also a harassment found online by anonymous accounts to our acquaintances and the label affiliates, which was disrupting our business. We decided it’s important to make this announcement once and for all.

Thank you again for our label mates, friends, people who supported us and cheered us up, and finally our fans who continue to love flau’s music.