The Legendary Con Man, who even deceived President Zelenskyy – Fuminori Tsuchiko
Aug 13
33 min read
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https://bbs.tgfcer.com/viewthread.php?action=printable&tid=5989350
I long wondered whether or not to publish this post, as it is essentially a negative campaign. However, I have been hearing the locals in Kharkiv that the self-claimed volunteer Japanese man has been refusing to offer food for the poor, despite the fact that he has been asking for money to exactly offer the locals food. All this is simply because this and that customer has been seen to be receiving food from the then co-founder of the cafe, Natalia (now his nemesis). In other words, this old Japanese ‘volunteer’ is determining who is to live or to die due to his own personal vengeance towards Natalia. (It is my understanding, however, that Fuminori was helping the locals earnestly at first – he changed after he received the award from President Zelenskyy. I believe that Fuminori started to think he could make money and do anything he wants after he received the fame from the society.)
It has come to a point that I cannot let this go – the whole incident has been reported to the banks in Japan as well as to the police. Journalists and the local Ukrainian volunteers are being harmed by this man’s behaviour. I decided that I had no choice but to publish this. Below is what I have written to keep a record for myself and to explain to the foreign journalists who were interested in investigating the incident in early January and February. What I want you, readers, to do is ask Fuminori for the revealing of the financial records. If there is nothing nefarious, he should be able to show them to you. NOTE: he does not speak English, and all the English posts are made by the translator called Akiko Kanō. I still do not yet know how she can help him after disgracing Ukraine and the Ukrainians so much. Since I am blocked by her, it may be good for you to ask her why she is still supporting him. This is her facebook link. https://www.facebook.com/akiko.kano.77?
Aug. 14th, 2025
Updated on Sep. 8th, 2025
Для української версії, будь ласка, натисніть тут.
Легендарний «шахрай», який навіть дискредитував японських прихильників — Фумінорі Цучіко
The Real Face of Fuminori Tsuchiko: The Legendary Con-Man
I: “I can say whatever I want in words”
– my personal encounter with Fuminori Tsuchiko –
It was in December of 2022 when I first met Fuminori Tsuchiko. He was touring Japan to fundraise for the Ukrainian cause. I myself had been invested in this cause since the beginning of the Russian Invasion into Ukraine on Feb. 24th, 2022. Yet, there was too little information about the situations in Ukraine, about the conditions of the Ukrainian evacuees in Japan and what kinds of volunteer groups there were for Ukraine. Thus, it was only natural when I suddenly received a message from Fuminori Tsuchiko in October of the same year and I was let to know that he was the only volunteer in Kharkiv helping the local victims of the war that I began keeping in touch with him to help him support for the cause.
I myself had been and still have been teaching Japanese to the Ukrainian evacuees in Japan, as I am not able to go to Ukraine and help the people myself. I thought teaching Japanese to the Ukrainian evacuees for free was the least I could do to help them find a job in Japan and get by everyday life. Without a job, the evacuees could not afford to buy food and without the language, they would not be able to get a job, let alone communicate with the locals for moral support.
With the help of Kōichi Kuwabara, also known as Kuwaman, a Japanese influencer and YouTube creator, Fuminori Tsuchiko was made famous in the fall of 2022. Mr. Kuwabara made the famous clip detailing Mr. Tsuchiko’s activities in supporting the people evacuated in the subway in Kharkiv before coming to Japan for a fundraising tour. This clip, however, has been already taken down by Mr. Kuwabara himself as you will read that he himself was a victim of Fuminori’s and Mr. Kuwabara did not want to deceive his followers into believing Fuminori’s ‘volunteer activities’ which turned out to be nothing but a scheme for him to become famous and recognized for fame and money.
These are pictures of him complaining about not getting his Permit approved by Ukraine – he says that this is a corrupt country and he feels stupid for having helped the locals and he would sell all the medals and badges on Amazon if he did not get his permit, with the exclamatory remark “Volunteering in this country (Ukraine) is not worth risking my life for!” – Jan. 22nd post from his own Facebook (now deleted). (The first picture is where Fuminori is eating expensive food at a fancy restaurant when he refuses to give food for the poor, even though he has received a lot of money from supporters who believe in him.)
This is a picture where Mr. Tsuchiko got angry and tore apart all the names of the donors from Japan and overseas and threw away into the garbage can. He was not angry at Natalia only but also us the donors. I have three videos of him tearing them apart while the customers are still eating, which I cannot post here since I am not a premium member of the blog, but upon request, I can send them to you. Alternatively, you can watch the videos here posted on my personal X account.
The real face of a self-claimed philanthropist who collects money for his own gain. pic.twitter.com/CJLWVjQ6nv
— issei takehara (@Icreeksophia)
This is a sign put in front of New FumiCafe after he parted with Natalia. In Ukrainian, it says something like “Those who receive free meals from another cafe (obviously referring to Natalia’s, since there is no other free cafe nearby; and many customers have recently been complaining to Natalia that Fuminori does not give us food because he told us ‘I saw you standing in line to get food from Natalia before, so I won’t give you food’) will be turned down and we will not give out meals to them.” Now, Natalia works 5 days a week, and for 2 days, she must rest – during those days, elderly people need food, but when they go to Fuminori’s cafe, they get turned away without a meal. Is this what he calls “a Samurai spirit”? He often says “I give people food because any sensible persons would do the same if you see someone who is hungry in front of them” on Facebook, but what he is doing is actually the exact opposite. So what is he collecting his money for, if he is not serving the hungry food?
II: From Trust to Doubts
Fuminori Tsuchiko came back to Japan twice officially and twice unofficially. The first two times he came back to Japan were to raise awareness and fundraise money so the people in Kharkiv, where he stayed at, could get food and would not go hungry. This was done in the form of a tour all over Japan, organized by Kuwaman the influencer. The first time he came to Japan was in December of 2022, speaking about the reality of people in Ukraine, particularly in Kharkiv. The next time he came to Japan was the following year in 2023 in June, again, to promote public awareness and fundraise the money. He also had some credit card issues with banks that he could not withdraw money from Ukraine due to the suspicion that he was involved with an illegal conduct and taking money from people by deceiving them.
I as well as many others who listened to him talk with the Power Point presentation, showing the pictures of the local people in Kharkiv never doubted he would do such a thing and we all believed that the bank was overreacting because the significant amount of money was flowing into his account all of the sudden after the fundraising events, as often happens with setting up the fundraising for the first time.
However, he kept having issues with the banks all over the world, including PayPal and other fundraising groups overseas and they all halted his accounts one by one after he went back to Ukraine in June of 2023. By this time, he had already opened a free café for the local Ukrainians without enough money to buy food so they could get free meal a day. Once again, just looking at his Facebook uploads, we thought that was what he was doing, i.e., teaming up with the locals and working for the locals.
When the year changed and it became 2024, the sanctions put on him by many financial companies began to weigh on him and he was no longer getting enough money to run the business. He then decided to come back to Japan again in May to explain how he had received the presidential medal from President Zelenskyy for his contribution and that he was not involved with any fraudulent activities. Yet, when Japanese banks and overseas fundraising groups demanded him of the detailed accounts of how the money was spent, he could not provide any. It was then some of us became aware that he did not have an accountant and all the money he was getting was managed solely by him. All he had was his handwriting account of what he used the supporters’ money for. Of course, any travel expenses to Japan and to Ukraine were not written there. Due to these untransparent usage of the donation money, he was not able to get his banks or PayPal and others to agree to let him have the money and they all froze his accounts so he could not even get a penny.
He met with me then in Osaka for dinner (which I paid for) to talk about expanding his support teams. He told me that this trip to Japan in May was done in secret and he had not even told his own staff members in Ukraine. Following this, he told me that I could not tell anybody that he was in Japan because he did not want to make his supporters “worry”. Later, however, we found out that this was because he was using his supporters’ money to travel and not his own money, which he had about $100,000 aside from the donation money (he would not use a penny from his own money to support Ukrainians, but he only used the money from donation) according to the volunteer who visited him in October, 2024, when Mr. Tsuchiko told the volunteer (a.k.a. Mr. A) how much money he has in his private account. Mr. Tsuchiko told me that he wanted to build a system of individual offices subservient to him alone in all over Japan so he could make us fundraise and send the money to the co-founder of his café, Natalia’s account. This way, he would not have to come back to Japan every time banks stop the flow of the money by mere suspicion and he could also use us – the individual volunteers who supported him – to advertise in Japan and abroad to let his activities known so as to receive more money efficiently. I was one of his strong supporters that he came to me and asked me to have “an office” from which information given by him will directly be spread out through SNS. It was indeed for this purpose he came back to Japan this time in addition to talk to the banks. He then went to meet his other donors in other parts of Japan in the short time left for him in Japan and asked them the same thing. They too agreed, since there was no reason for us to refuse such a grandiose volunteer activity. Furthermore, Mr. Tsuchiko told us that he would keep us updated with the news about Ukraine and what was happening in Kharkiv in real-time. This was such a valuable offer for us since the true accounts and raw information about how people lived daily from the war field were more important to understand what is needed in the region than the filtered bits of information we get from the news. He left Japan, telling me that he would get back to me about how to set up offices after he returns to Ukraine.
When he went back to Ukraine in June of 2024, because all his staff were overworked and underpaid, not to mention they all knew Mr. Tsuchiko was running out of the money he could use, they decided to team up with a larger volunteer organization in Kyiv that could guarantee the salary and money they needed to survive. Natalia, his co-founder of FumiCaffe was the orchestrator of this plan. She knew that Mr. Tsuchiko would not agree to it, so she decided to agree with the terms with the volunteer group in Kyiv while Mr. Tsuchiko was in Japan. This decision was done immediately after the Kharkiv bombing when Mr. Tsuchiko was away. Natalia simply thought she was putting her staff members and herself in danger if she would not relocate. She tried to contact Mr. Tsuchiko about this, but he kept ignoring her messages – which I saw with my own eyes and heard Mr. Tsuchiko say “Natalia is saying something but I don’t want to respond because I don’t want to be found out that I am in Japan now.” Mr. Tshuchiko returned back to Ukraine about a week later. Upon hearing Natalia’s decision, Mr. Tsuchiko got infuriated since it was his café, he insisted, and fired all the employees and he decided to start a café business all by himself from the scratch. It may be more appropriate to say that he left his own café than he fired his staff. He had also envisioned the building of a library for children by this time so kids could learn and read books during the war time. So he used all the money available to him from donation (again, never his own money, even though he had more money than the entire donation money from all over the world) in order to construct his new café and a children’s library. However, his donation money was not enough to do all this by himself, so he came back to Japan again in July of 2024 to personally ask those who have money to support him – and I was among one of them. Not knowing the details of the incident that took place between him and his old café staff, on top of him making video clips posting on Facebook about how he was betrayed by his own staff, many of us sympathized with him and gave a lot of money – both domestic and abroad. I volunteered to subtitle his video so he would get more hits from abroad as my English was the best among the people he knew.
When he came back from Ukraine to Japan in July of 2024, he once again tried to deal with the banks and PayPal and others – this time he had some documents from the accountant he had hired since his last visit in a matter of one month and had his financial documents ready somehow enough to convince the bank to unfreeze his account. To this day, I do not know how he did it except what he told me – he gave them “the proper documentations”.
Thanks to this, he was once again able to collect donation money into his own bank account and his own PayPal account. However, he was still afraid that the banks may freeze his account, so he used my address (without my knowing!) to create another bank account in Osaka just in case his bank account in Tokyo freezes his account again. In this way, he would at least have the money that was donated to his account of another branch in Japan.
He then left for Ukraine again. It was then that his attitude suddenly changed towards me. One day, he posted an accusatory message against Natalia on his Facebook. The message was pity and vengeful, and many members of his Japan offices felt uncomfortable sharing his post. I was one of the members who voiced against re-posting it, because I feared such a defamatory post would be seen as petty and too personal, and he would lose his supports from his supporters. I was the one who was in charge of translating his posts into English back then, so I did not want to spread the bad reputation against Mr. Tsuchiko. However, he called me on the phone and angrily told me to translate it into English and demanded that I shared his post. Unwillingly, I did what he told me to do, but he did not like how I voiced against him, and from that day onwards, he began to treat me as a tool and the way he spoke to me was similar to the tone of that which one would speak to his subordinate, or to a slave.
II: Tsuchiko Fuminori’s Nefarious, Fraudulent Activities
The First Hand Accounts from Two Victims –
What I will talk about here are the real accounts I heard from the firsthand information
from the members of the FumiCaffe Office and his long-term supporters like myself. I will pick up two people that I recently spoke with. One of the two people who was deceived is none other than the influencer mentioned above, Kuwaman. He has given me an explicit permission to use his name so he would like to apologize in public for those who believed in him and helped Mr. Tsuchiko, who continuously ask for money for his own personal benefit. In order to conceal the other person’s identity, I will use the alphabet letter to refer to him. Let me call him “Mr. A” to secure his privacy. I have, again, already asked for the permissions from each of them to tell the stories here as well as use the pictures they have taken as proof of their accounts. Let me start with Mr. A’s account first.
It was in October that I contacted my fellow member of the office, as I was by then under an extraordinary stress and was also infuriated by the series of condescending messages from Mr. Tsuchiko. (I still keep the screenshots of them, so if you need to see them to believe me, do feel free to message me and I will send you our conversation.) I asked for an opinion to my fellow member for what I should do because it seems like I got stuck with the “volunteer” activity I did not want to be a part of anymore. This person A was always supportive of Mr. Tsuchiko, so I asked him if he still thought of Mr. Tsuchiko as a trustworthy person even after showing the most recent message I had just received from Mr. Tsuchiko. As soon as he saw my message, however, his usual attitude to defend Mr. Tsuchiko was not there. Instead, he asked me to let him know if I received more messages from Mr. Tsuchiko. I thought it was for him to determine if Mr. Tsuchiko was indeed a trustworthy person and he himself was having a doubt. After a few exchanges of messages with Mr. A, he told me the following on the phone conversation that lasted for over 2 hours – apparently with frustration and loneliness and, above all, anguish he felt from the utter betrayal from Mr. Tsuchiko.
The Testimony of Mr. A
Mr. A is a fellow (former) member of the offices Mr. Tsuchiko had earlier set up to get money directly to him. He also runs a company and has donated his own money to Mr. Tsuchiko that amounts to over 3,000,000 yen (about $20,000 USD) and has used his own money to travel to Ukraine and other necessities in assisting him on top of that money. He also has been a member of an NPO and has since the war started been supporting Ukraine prior to meeting Mr. Tsuchiko. He first met this 76-year-old Tsuchiko Fuminori in the summer of 2022, when Mr. A was doing his own volunteer work through the NPO he belonged to in Kyiv. He heard a rumour about a Japanese person doing a volunteer work in Kharkiv, when he went to visit him. The two had been in contact since then. When Mr. Tsuchiko came back to Japan in May of 2024, he contacted Mr. A and paid him a visit and talked about setting up an office so the money would flow more smoothly to him. Mr. A saw that Mr. Tsuchiko was keeping all the receipts of his purchases meticulously, and found him very likable and trustworthy, so he agreed to set up an office for him. After all, Mr. Tsuchiko had been awarded the Legendary Award by President Zelenskyy in the previous year for his tireless efforts to help the Ukrainians and people of Kharkiv. There was no reason to refuse to cooperate for better outcomes.
As Mr. A had a lot of money and contacts, the assistance from Mr. A was more than welcome for Mr. Tsuchiko, whose bank account had just been frozen and looking for other ways to collect money to help the locals in Kharkiv. In May, during his covert stay in Japan, the two made a plan for the future and discussed how best to help the people of Kharkiv. Mr. A, then, was asked to come to help setting up of the new FumiCaffe after Mr. Tsuchiko was “betrayed” in June by his former colleague and the co-founder of the café in Kharkiv. According to him, the café was to be set up sometime at the end of October before the severe winter comes. Hence, Mr. A made a plan to go to Kharkiv to help him and his staff members to set up the new café as well as bring necessary souvenirs for the establishment of the new FumiCaffe, such as small Japanese flags or decorations.
In mid-October, Mr. A arrived at Kharkiv with the commodities Mr. Tsuchiko had asked him to bring, totaling over 35 kg, including Starbucks Coffee Beans and Japanese food. Mr. Tsuchiko welcomed him with warm greetings and took him to show him around the area. He took Mr. A to his newly established Children’s Library and to the location where the new café was to be built. He also introduced him to his current members of his café staff and then took him out to lunch, which surprised Mr. A. since he was not taken to any ordinary restaurants, but to a fancy restaurant in town! Although it was paid for by Fuminori’s friend, Andrey, Mr. A was taken aback at a special treatment he received when there were people who needed the money. It was, of course, done out of respect for the Japanese volunteer to come to help the Ukrainians by Andrey, but the conversation that followed made Mr. A feel suspicious of and uncomfortable about Fuminori. The said restaurant is called AltBier.
It was when Mr. A took a photo at this restaurant, when he clearly saw a change in Mr. Tsuchiko’s attitude. He was told never to show the photos to anyone because “we cannot be seen to be eating here, since people in Kharkiv cannot afford to come here” and it was “between our secret”. After that, Mr. A was asked to take pictures of somebody making a donation to a donation box Mr. Tsuchiko was holding at the park and at the department store. He was asked to take pictures when there are more people for a promotion purpose. He was taken to a daily 16:00 meeting at Children’s Library, where Mr. Tsuchiko used the google translate to give orders to his staff members. Mr. A, here, also saw that Mr. Tsuchiko was only giving orders in rather rigor manner and he would not take any questions and just demanded them that they did what he ordered. The meeting ended in 20 minutes and Mr. Tsuchiko himself would just go and take a walk or go to eat and do nothing. As Mr. A later described to me, it was like Mr. Tsuchiko was “enslaving them and nobody seemed happy”. These tours were somewhat obligatory for Mr. Tsuchiko, since Mr. A came all the way to help him and bring him what he needed, but when the opening of the café was approaching, the old man asked him to stay at his hotel because “the immigration officers et al. are finding him suspicious” and if Mr. A were to walk around by himself, he would get arrested and would have to pay the penalty fees. It was only a matter of 6 days since Mr. A arrived at Kharkiv when Mr. Tsuchiko abandoned him. Mr. A was also in touch with the NPO he belonged to and was getting the latest information about the security from them as well, so he knew that what Mr. Tsuchiko said was not true. He walked around by himself and he even greeted with a smile to the guards at the subway station when going out for meals. But nothing happened. However, in the messages he received from Mr. Tsuchiko, he was told that he would have to stay at the hotel until Mr. Tsuchiko said ‘it’s okay to leave’ because “the police found his colourful shoes suspicious and, once found, he might not be able to come back to Ukraine ever again.”
What this old man wanted to do was to keep Mr. A away from his newly established café, since there were media reporters interviewing him. Mr. Tsuchiko did not want to be seen as getting help from another Japanese person for fear of making him also famous. It was Mr. Tsuchiko who received the Legendary Award and he alone was the foreigner who was to be recognized. He wanted to keep it that way. Even after three days, Mr. A had not heard from the newly established café owner, so he messaged him but there was no response. When he received a message, again it was to make him stay away from the café. In fact, even before the café officially opened on November 2nd in 2024, Mr. Tsuchiko had already blocked him and cut ties with him since Mr. A was nothing more than a potential threat to Mr. Tsuchiko’s fame by then. Mr. Tsuchiko received the goods from him, money from him, took him around but Mr. A took pictures when Mr. Tsuchiko was having expensive meals. If Mr Tsuchiko had kept him around any longer, who knows what kind of pictures would be taken that he wanted to hide from even his own staff members? Mr. Tsuchiko had the visitor from Japan take enough pictures of his donation activities and if he stayed any longer, he too would get a media exposure and the world would know that it was not only Mr. Tsuchiko alone who was the “only foreigner who helps poor people of Kharkiv.” Since that day when Mr. Tsuchiko took him to the privately reserved fancy restaurant and Mr. A decided to take a picture of them having a meal there, he had been waiting to get rid of him. As a proof, he never messaged Mr. A but it was Mr. A whom Fuminori himself summoned to Kharkiv from Japan, who had to take the initiative to take actions. For the readers of this article, you are welcome to message me in private if you want to see more evidence of this, as I possess the message exchanges between the two and I have been given a permission to share them publicly by Mr. A himself.
Getting fed up with how Mr. Tsuchiko treated Mr. A, he decided to explore Kharkiv by himself and see what really was happening. During which time, he decided to document what Mr. Tsuchiko himself never showed or told on his Facebook posts but things that would shock the supporters of him. First, the new FumiCaffe was built right next to the old FumiCaffe, where Natalia, “the traitor,” still runs. Mr. Tsuchiko has consistently been secretive about the location of his new café, telling us “it is for a security reason” because, he told us, the Russians may bomb the location if it was made known. However, Mr. Tsuchiko does not have to tell us exactly where the new café is but he has only to tell us it is in a much poorer district or at least away from where his “betrayer” works, since he wanted to start a new café with a new mindset to help people. The reason he did not even do that is because it is only less than 2-minute walk from his old café, where Natalia still works. In short, he still held grudge against Natalia and he wanted to show her he could get more customers and eventually destroy her café. Normally, if you were betrayed and you were determined to start afresh, you would not open a business right in front of the former café where people who betrayed him works at. Furthermore, according to Mr. A, there are at least 2 more locations that have much cheaper rent and much needed by the locals just one subway station away. In other words, there is absolutely no reason why the new FumiCaffe had to be built at a 2-minute walk location from his old café with an expensive rent. What is more, Children’s Library was built immediately next to Natalia’s apartment – so close so that you could sometimes see Natalia’s husband, Igor, sitting on the balcony from the window of Children’s Library. Surely there were better places Mr. Tsuchiko could find to build his Children’s Library at a cheaper cost and not immediately next to his “nemesis”! In fact, while visiting the library in the first few days Mr. A arrived at Kharkiv, he could spot Natalia come out of the apartment right next to Children’s Library to go shopping. Why did Mr. Tsuchiko have to build both his café and his library right next to Natalia’s, whom he spoke so much evil of and told us he would never want to see or speak to her again? Also, why did he have to rent expensive places just to be so close to the people he hated the most? These facts were never explained and were concealed from his supporters both in Japan and abroad. According to Mr. A, Mr. Tsuchiko does not have a close relationship with his staff members and he does not trust anyone. He does not go out with his staff members after work, nor does he chat with them anything except about work. His staff members would often say that “there are oftentimes Fuminori (as Mr, Tsuchiko is usually referred to as) disappears for few days, if not for weeks” and they do not know where he went. Mr. Tsuchiko would not answer where he had been and everyone is afraid of asking him questions. This matches with what I heard from my personal meetings with Mr. Tsuchiko in May and in July that he was in Japan covertly and that he did not tell even to his staff members that he was back in Japan so, he continued on, “please do not post any of the pictures you took with me until I have been back to Ukraine.” I asked him what he told his staff when he left Ukraine because I thought they would worry about him, to which he responded, “nobody worries about me; they probably think I am in Europe trying to find supporters.” I listened to him half-jokingly then, but now it makes sense to me. Literally, nobody cared about where he was. Because if they asked him, he would scold at them and treat them like garbage, like he eventually did to me. “Do not waste my time with your stupid questions,” is what Mr. Tsuchiko used to tell me since August. That’s how he got away. That’s how he gets away with most questions that involve revealing his inconsistent stories and his ill-deeds. For instance, he posted on Facebook that he hired 7 staff members, but when I was organizing his records as the representative of his Osaka Office, he ignored my questions when I asked him if he could tell the rest of the members of FumiCaffe staff. I needed that information to make a homepage so he could get more supporters and I was collecting all the information about awards he has received and how many staff members are at the café and what their names were etc… so anyone who looks at the homepage would see transparently what he is doing with whom. I could spot 5 staff members from his Facebook posting and he introduced them by names. But I could not see the other two, so I asked him about the other two a couple of times. First he ignores the questions he does not want to respond, and if I push too hard, he would tell me not to ask stupid questions. Mr. A also was wondering about the staff members when visiting Kharkiv, because he wanted to bring each of them a souvenir from Japan for working so hard. After all, Mr. A was also a member of Japan Offices. It was only when he got to Kharkiv, when he was told by Mr. Tsuchiko that he only has 5 staff members and he said 7, because when there is a trouble with the police, etc… he needed money to bribe them with. So he told his supporters that he was hiring 7 staff members and he would document on paper as “salary” but out of 7, the salary for two of them goes directly into his pocket. He would never use his own money but only the money from his supporters. It was the case when he visited Japan as well. Since his visits to Japan were covert, he would not have to make it public, so he would use the donations from his supporters to travel to Japan and explain to us, supporters, that the money was used for food and other necessities. He also revealed that he had about $100,000 USD in his own private bank account but he told Mr. A that he could not use any of his own money because if he used his own money, he would not be able to live when his volunteer “business” ends.
Now, let us put this in perspectives. Mr. Tsuchiko has two daughters on whom he could rely, yet his two daughters would never help him and Mr. Tsuchiko himself would never ask them for help. Instead, he uses my home address to create the bank account without my knowledge and he uses other supporters’ money to buy the necessities. He once asked me to send him a laminator and customized business cards. I thought I was doing service to the Ukrainians, so I accepted it but it cost me $200 USD total including shipping. I kept wondering, “normally, you would ask your own family members for things like this – it is not a lot of money to ask from your own family but it is a little audacious of him to ask to do this to his supporters.” Of course, he never paid me back. Now, for those who do not know, Mr. Tsuchiko was arrested for stealing 50 Nintendo DS from various kids when he was 60 years old. You can google this information (though only in Japanese) and find his criminal record. He was sentenced a year in prison. He told me and others about this in his own words a number of times. It appears that his daughters did not want to have anything to do with him anymore and he apparently was “quite a handful” by his own admission. There have been other petty tricks Mr. Tsuchiko used to get as much benefit as he could and destroy his enemies as cruelly as possible (such as an attempt to force the bakery into bankruptcy that deceived him into buying flour at an expensive rate that made him furious about and posted on Facebook in June of 2024. His posting was about complaints only, but what happened after was never revealed – According to Mr. A, Mr. Tsuchiko bragged about having bought the space right next to the bakery that deceived him, and started distributing bread for free [he used his supporters’ money to buy the space and bread], cornering the bakery right next to it into bankruptcy, as it could not compete with the free distribution of the bread by Mr. Tsuchiko, who used his supporters’ money). There are plenty of other incidents like this, and this is one of the reasons why he told Mr. A that he was glad he had someone to take his place when asking for donations at the supermarket. This is because when Mr. Tsuchiko would go to the bathroom, oftentimes people would kick the donation boxes and make a mess out of it, despising him gravely. Mr. Tsuchiko is infamous among the locals for conducting retributions against anyone who disagrees with him. This is another reason why even his own staff members do not communicate with him other than work related matters. It only makes sense for the staff to want to quit after saving up some money. Indeed, this did also happen, when a staff member quit after receiving the salary without telling him for fear of threats. However, Mr. Tsuchiko made it sound as if this employee had stolen the salary and left and posted it on Facebook with her picture and name as if to let everyone in the city know that this person did something wrong. But level-headed people would soon realize that no one could “steal” the salary from him, because he only pays the staff after they have worked for certain hours. Neither he, nor would anyone, ever pay their own staff members salary in advance – unless it is a dirty business. In conclusion, Mr. Tsuchiko has a lot to explain to his supporters how he is using the money from donations, since as of now, he does not have any accountants to keep the record and he did tell me as recently as December 13th, 2024, that he is in charge of the money and no one else is, when I asked him to pay me for the money that he owes me. This money has not been paid back to me yet.
The Testimony of Kuwaman
Kuwaman is an influencer and he is the one who made the video that made Mr. Tsuchiko world-wide famous in the Fall of 2022. He is also the organizer of the tour in Japan to inform what Mr. Tsuchiko had been doing in Kharkiv, the event to which I also attended in December of 2022. Kuwaman, too, was doing his own volunteer activity in Kyiv in 2022, when he heard of a Japanese man supporting the people of Kharkiv in subway. He found him noble and it made him want to be a part of the volunteer movement to help support the Ukrainians. He went to Kharkiv and talked about what Mr. Tsuchiko had been doing and he decided that people should know about what this old man was doing all by himself. However, upon Mr. Tsuchiko’s betrayal, he wanted his story to be known so he could minimize the number of people who get tricked and deceived into giving him the donation money. Kuwaman, as well as Mr. A, was very worried and in a dilemma that by making their stories public, there would be less people who would want to support volunteers in Ukraine. This, in fact, has been the reason for many who have been deceived by Mr. Tsuchiko a large sum of money not to speak out. By speaking out, people give Mr. Tsuchiko no money and as a result, the people suffering in Kharkiv would suffer even more and would get no help at all. This is the single most difficulty they both faced with when they told me their own experiences. Let it be clear that Mr. Tsuchiko is a hopeless liar and a person with criminal record, who thrives in Kharkiv by bribing the local officials. Mr. Tsuchiko himself is a liar per excellence and he would do anything to be famous and get his favourable attentions. He is a scumbag who treats his own staff with utter disrespect and is extremely vengeful in nature. However, what he is doing to the many people in Kharkiv cannot be described as bad deeds. Just because the volunteer guy is evil, it does not mean what this evil person is doing is also bad for the community. We must make a distinction here, as it is also my wish not to do harm to the people suffering in Kharkiv in Ukraine, but my sole aim is for Mr. Tsuchiko to explain and pay back the money he stole from his donors and supporters. It is emphatically not my intention to suggest that you stop donating – this is for you to decide. Unfortunately, I myself do not have the answer for this, but to remind myself that whatever money I donate to Mr. Tsuchiko, not all the money would directly go to the local people, just like donating to the large organizations. The difference between Mr. Tsuchiko, who is a lone volunteer and to the volunteer organizations is that the money used in organizations would go to pay their employees and processing fees that none of us likes, but the money used by Fuminori is used for his own expensive meals and his relationship with Russian friends so he could maintain his statue and he could reign over the people of Kharkiv. Fuminori is the manifestation of a tyrant (which ironically is what he calls himself oftentimes – “I am a dictator and I am the sole decider of how the money is used for”, as he would often brag about as if he wants to say he is the only one who knows how best to use the money for the people), whereas the organizations are bureaucracy. If there are organizations who are helping the people of Kharkiv, then I would recommend them over Fuminori for sure, but we do not know any organizations that help people in Kharkiv – this is because Fuminori has shown strong disapproval of any other group to be in “his” territory.
I digress. Let me get back to Mr. Kuwabara, or Kuwaman’s story about his experience with Fuminori. After he made Fuminori famous with his SNS skills and with his name value as an influencer, he was hired by Fuminori in the following year as his propagandist. Fuminori approached Kuwaman to hire him, praising his skills to have made Fuminori Internationally famous. Fuminori specifically asked him the following conditions: 1) Kuwaman to come to Ukraine and live with Fuminori – as he had a large room – for one month and make videos for SNS and spread the words about him. 2) Fuminori would pay him the entire money – accommodations and whatever is necessary to do his job, including the ticket to Ukraine and from Ukraine back to Japan. 3) Fuminori would pay him at the market rate for one-month contract. Kuwaman had his other jobs to do, but since this would be directly helping the people of the oppressed country, he eventually accepted the offer. Fuminori bought him the plane ticket to Ukraine and for the entire month of July 2023, he was to spend every day with Fuminori, documenting every volunteer activity Fuminori was doing, may it be standing in the part to collect money or the children’s day he used to have at his old FumiCaffe every Saturday. He worked tirelessly and completed his tasks. It was at this time when Fuminori heard about his nomination for the Legendary Award by President Zelenskyy in August for the Ukrainian Independence Day. Unfortunately, Kuwaman was not able to go as he had other jobs to do and the contract was for one month. So he asked Fuminori to get as many pictures and videos possible and send them back to Kuwaman, who would by then be back in Japan, still editing. On the day he was to leave Ukraine, Fuminori told him that he would pay him after Kuwaman has arrived in Japan and Kuwaman agreed. At the airport, Fuminori was supposed to buy him the ticket back to Japan, but he started to say “Oh no, it seems there is something wrong with my credit card and I cannot withdraw money.” So, with the promise made by Fuminori that he would pay him back the plane ticket after Kuwaman gets back to Japan, Kuwaman bought the plane ticket by himself. After the reception of the Legendary Award, Kuwaman asked if Fuminori could get any videos as they would be great to use for the promotions, but Fuminori said he was not able to. Kuwaman kept working to edit and once everything was done, he sent his work to Fuminori and asked for his salary. However, Fuminori asked him to make invoices detailing his working hours. This required Kuwaman to hire a lawyer to do that, as Fuminori demanded to know the very specific hours he spent on working. Kuwaman did all that and asked him again with an invoice attached, but Fuminori stopped responding to his messages or calls. He kept trying to reach him for weeks and months but no response. He realized that he was tricked into working for him for free. At first, he was very upset and angry, but he began to think that even if he could not get his money back, everything was done for helping Ukrainian people. Even though the amount Fuminori owed him was over $10,000 USD, Kuwaman decided to think positively and by the end of the year, he tried to focus on his own work and decided to think his money was spent on volunteer activities.
It was in Spring of 2024 that he realized he was blocked by Fuminori on every SNS and that made him remember how petty this old man was. Yes, his work was done for the sake of Ukrainian people, but Fuminori is getting so much more money from donations thanks to Kuwaman’s work, and the contract was that Fuminori would pay him to do what he asked him to do. It was supposed to be a paid work, and since Fuminori is famous enough and no longer needing any extra money to survive (as mentioned earlier, he has over $100,000 USD in his own bank account as his own private money), Kuwaman started to try to contact Fuminori in any way he could. Finally, he heard the information that Fuminori was back in Japan in May and was in Fukushima, he found out his whereabouts and called the people who hosted Fuminori for weeks during his stay in Japan. But alas, when Kuwaman made the call, Fuminori had already left the house and the host did not know where Fuminori was. Kuwaman explained how he was ripped off by Fuminori and the host in Fukushima told Kuwaman that he would personally contact him and talk to him about the money and Kuwaman’s situation. Kuwaman thanked him and waited for the response. After a week or so, the host in Fukushima messaged Kuwaman if he had received the money yet, since the host had already contacted Fuminori and asked him about it and Fuminori said he would be paying Kuwaman soon. However, Kuwaman was still blocked by Fuminori and he had never heard from him again.
It was in July when Fuminori came back to Japan again to meet me and make me the representative of the first office in Japan. I had not been in touch with Kuwaman, so I had no idea that he had been treated fraudulently by Fuminori, but I remembered Kuwaman was the one who organized the Japan tour of Fuminori’s talks in December 2022 and in June 2023, so I asked him what had become of him. Fuminori responded, “Kuwaman only talks about money and always tries to steal money from me, so I blocked him.” He also told me that Kuwaman was always speaking ill of me and how he would not go to certain countries to do volunteer because he is afraid of getting sick – so he would only go to safe places, etc… All this was to make me believe that Kuwaman is not a trustworthy person and even a cunning one that I should avoid him. But back then, I had no idea this is what was happening, and I believed every single word he said. In September or so, I received a message from Kuwaman. But having been planted the idea that “this is the person who always spoke ill of me”, I did not respond. At that time, I was dealing with more stressful things – namely, Fuminori’s sudden transformation into tyrannical attitudes against me. This has already been spoken in the beginning. I tried to be calm and deal with Fuminori so as not to offend him, but any questions I would ask, Fuminori either ignored or condescendingly responded. As someone who was in charge of the office that was supposed to work smoothly to collect donation money for him, there was too little information about anything. As I was getting frustrated, I suddenly remembered the friend request from Kuwaman on my SNS, and I began to suspect that he wanted to talk to me about Fuminori – or else, why would anyone who speaks ill of me initiate to be friends with me? Maybe Kuwaman has the similar experience with me, after having worked with Fuminori for so long. At least, I thought, there was something to benefit in terms of information by talking to him. So I responded to him, and he explained everything that I have written above. It was in mid-October when I spoke with him – around the same time as I spoke with Mr. A. I told about him to Mr. A, and he told me a rumour that was going around in Fukushima that somebody was deceived by Fuminori and got a lot of money stolen by him. Mr. A himself did not believe the rumour but everyone in the region knew about this ominous rumour. It all matches up! All these people who have no connections with each other were telling the same story that made consistent sense.
This is the entirely of all I know at least from the first-hand information that has certainly happened. I was even in touch with Mr. A when he was still in Ukraine and was in touch with him all the way until he was safely out of the country, since if Fuminori had spread a bad rumour about him, “there is this guy with these shoes – he looks like Japanese but I don’t know him and he seems suspicious”, it would be a word of the President Zelenskyy’s pick against a self-claimed Japanese volunteer, so there was high chance that he would “disappear” for weeks if not months. In fact, Mr. A told me, that there have been people who went missing after such report from neighbours and some NPO volunteers went missing and came back after a month with PTSD and mental dysfunction.
So the source of my information is authentic and I have evidence to prove it. I cannot just post every single picture here on the blog (though I do very much wish to do so), so please ask me privately if you have any doubts about any of my claims. These two people I talked about would eventually come out and speak their own stories. There may have been slight differences, such as the exact days or dates etc… but the substance of the story is the same. In any case, any mistakes I have spoken here would be corrected by them, as I am showing this blog to them as well to check if I have made any mistakes in their accounts.
Now, what do you think about Fuminori Tsuchiko? And more importantly, what do you think is the best thing to do in order to help the people of Kharkiv while punishing the criminal who sells out his own friends to thugs, if they tried to speak against him? Mr. A told me that in all his volunteer activities in his life, never had he been so thoroughly and skillfully deceived by the person of the same nationality in overseas. Let alone put in danger of life. His criminality was apparent since at least when he was first arrested in Japan – by the way, it is very difficult to get a year sentence in prison just by stealing gaming consoles. Since it was a long time ago, I could not find any detailed information other than the fact that he stole 50 Nintendo DS from kids and was sentenced to prison for one year, I would not be surprised if there was something more ominous going on.
Written prior to Jan. 15th, 2025
More information to come when deemed necessary.
