A man arrested for allegedly using a forged teaching license changed his surname repeatedly through adoption, apparently to avoid being identified on a national registry for teachers punished for child sexual abuse or other offenses, sources said Friday.
The man, Masahito Kondo, 66, allegedly submitted a copy of the fake license to a board of education in Fukuoka Prefecture to work as an assistant teacher at a junior high school after he had been arrested for his involvement in a child prostitution case.
According to police sources, the suspect’s last name was Kobata in 1985, when he first obtained a teaching license.
In 2014, his last name was Kondo when he was arrested on suspicion of attending a teaching job interview using a fake license. He called himself Hashimoto in 2017, when he was held for allegedly presenting a fake teaching license for renewal.
Over the past four years, he has been using the name Kondo.
The board of education said that it did not find the suspect’s name on the national register when it hired him this spring.
It is believed that the suspect was registered as Kobata, the name he used when he was arrested in 2005 for offenses including child prostitution involving a junior high school girl.
The same year, Kondo was fired and his teaching license became invalid. He later acquired a new license, but it became invalid again in 2012 after he was found guilty of driving without a driver’s license.
After that, Kondo worked in education in Saitama and Gunma prefectures.
Teacher in Fukuoka avoid identification on child sex registry by changing name
