Masatoshi Kumagai, the 63-year-old head of GMO Internet Group, appeared close to tears at a news conference on November 2, where he addressed unauthorized access to the group's Onamae.com Desktop Cloud service. Neighbours of the executive, meanwhile, describe helicopter noise and champagne parties, Daily Shincho reported.
At the conference Kumagai acknowledged that experts had flagged weaknesses in the system two years before the leak. "It is also a fact that we had received pointers from specialists about problems in the system," he said, according to the report. He runs the group in a top-down style.
The neighbours' complaints center on his home. One resident said the roar of a helicopter left a wife neurotic, and others described models being gathered for champagne parties. "I just want him to give us a break," one said, Daily Shincho reported.
Breach response questioned
The leak itself has drawn scrutiny from specialists, who say the attack does not look like the work of professionals. They point to two things, the first being the authenticity of the personal data published. The attackers released one person's information on October 27 after GMO refused a $1 million ransom demand, about ¥150 million.
The second point of contention followed the Yomiuri Shimbun's online edition reporting on October 27 that the victim had spoken to a pool of reporters, which prompted a strong reaction.
The report on Kumagai's neighbours sits alongside separate material on Eiji Iyama, an 84-year-old former lawmaker with assets said to total ¥400 billion, who became embroiled in a marriage dispute that reached the courts. "Everyone deceived me together — it is like a group marriage fraud case they all put together," Iyama said, according to the report.