MGM Grand Casino

MGM Grand Casino is presented as a Las Vegas gambling venue whose relationship with Susumu Kajiyama became a lead in an investigation of money generated by his loan-sharking operation. Kajiyama was described as a high-roller with casino accounts and a long history of visits; the reporting connected his gambling, access to cash in the United States, and a reported $2 million deposit with the casino’s Tokyo offices. The casino thus figures as an institutional waypoint in the movement of money across borders, while the account stops short of proving that it knowingly assisted criminal activity.

Kajiyama’s casino relationship

The casino entered the investigation through information supplied by Cyclops, who said that Kajiyama had lost a couple of million dollars gambling at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Cyclops suggested that the losses might also be understood as money laundering, but that was his interpretation, not a demonstrated finding. He added that Kajiyama had spent considerable time in the United States, placing cash in a safe-deposit box in Japan and withdrawing it during visits, and that Kajiyama also had overseas bank accounts.

Cyclops described Kajiyama as a VIP at the MGM Grand and at Caesars Palace. He attributed the introductions to Tadamasa Goto, who was familiar with the casinos and had taken Kajiyama there. That connection made the casino relationship part of a wider network of personal introductions as well as financial access. Kajiyama’s own criminal enterprise was not limited to direct lending: it relied on front companies, property, and employees, including people outside the yakuza. The casino evidence extended the investigation from that domestic business network to Kajiyama’s dealings in the United States.

Accounts, deposits, and uncertainty

The investigation’s reported figures describe several kinds of holdings rather than one clearly reconciled total. Cyclops estimated that Kajiyama had about $4 million between two casinos and perhaps another $1 million in U.S. bank accounts. He separately said that Kajiyama had deposited $2 million in cash with the MGM Grand’s offices in Tokyo. The book does not explain whether these amounts overlapped, or how much of the casino-related money was held in a particular account at a particular time; they should therefore be read as reported estimates, not as a single verified balance.

Kajiyama had been visiting Las Vegas for more than ten years and maintained accounts with a casino as well as with a bank in California. He had been withdrawing money in the United States. After receiving information from U.S. authorities, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department had been sending officials to examine his Las Vegas transactions since the summer. U.S. agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Nevada Gaming Commission, and the FBI, were also investigating him on suspicion of violating U.S. money-laundering laws. The account states that MGM Grand was making a token effort to cooperate with that investigation; it does not establish that the casino knew the source of Kajiyama’s money or deliberately helped conceal it.

Seizure and reporting

The investigation developed into a coordinated sequence of disclosures. A reporter arranged to publish the Las Vegas findings in Japan before a local reporter in Las Vegas published a related account. Under an arrangement with a police division chief, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department would then announce that it had seized more than $2 million belonging to Kajiyama in Tokyo, which officials believed likely to be illegal profits from his loan-sharking shops. The police also planned to rearrest him under Japan’s money-laundering laws, while the reporting would disclose the FBI investigation into his U.S. transactions.

By mid-November, the newspaper published the seizure and followed it with coverage of the FBI inquiry and Kajiyama’s spending in Las Vegas. The casino’s place in the story was therefore not confined to a colorful account of gambling: its reported relationship with Kajiyama helped connect a domestic seizure to an international investigation. The resulting coverage exposed how suspected proceeds from a Japanese lending business could be traced through casino and banking connections across jurisdictions, even as the precise flow and ownership of every sum remained uncertain.

Cash access and limits of the record

Not all of the money Kajiyama had deposited with U.S. casino offices in Tokyo was seized. Around the time of his arrest, one of his henchmen called a Caesars Palace representative in Tokyo and arranged for $1 million in cash to be delivered to a parking lot in central Tokyo. That transaction concerned Caesars Palace, not MGM Grand, but it clarifies the practical role casino offices could play in providing access to large sums. The episode also distinguishes a reported deposit at MGM Grand from the separate cash delivery attributed to Kajiyama’s associate.

Kajiyama did not confess. He was sentenced on February 9, 2005, to seven years of hard labor; the Tokyo courts initially chose not to impose a 5-billion-yen fine, an amount described as equivalent to the total he had taken from victims. The narrative suggests that he might still have had undiscovered funds, but does not trace such funds to MGM Grand. The casino remains significant as a documented site of Kajiyama’s high-roller activity, a reported holder of a large cash deposit through its Tokyo offices, and one point in a cross-border inquiry—not as an organization shown to have knowingly joined his criminal operation.