Like many bandmen before him, original vocalist of visual kei band RECLENS (レクレンズ) was arrested this week on charges of tax evasion.

RECLENS in 2011 with original vocalist Misaki.

Misaki Yuuta (三崎優太), known simply as Misaki (みさき) at the time, was the vocalist of RECLENS (レクレンズ) from their formation in 2010 until about mid-2011. He'd apparently done no bands before, and did none afterward.

Prior to joining that band, he'd allegedly founded a company called MEDIA HEARTS (メディアハーツ) in 2007, when he was just 18. It's unclear what the company did at the time, how he had enough money to found a company in the first place, or if he's even telling the truth about having founded it back then. At any rate, after Misaki ended his band activity in 2011, MEDIA HEARTS found success peddling bullshit health drinks of the “this kale will give you energy” variety. They even recently opened their FABIUS cafe, which sold cheeseburgers that somehow made you skinty idk.

“This burger made me shit myself!”

Misaki himself became known as the “green juice prince” (青汁王子) and appeared on several TV shows peddling his wares while looking cute. In the process, he became a millionaire and often boasted on social media about his four horses, having enough credit card points to buy a car, and traveling to other countries on a whim “because it was raining in Japan today.”

True to form, it appears that the whole time Misaki had been evading his taxes by clamining much less income than he earned, often by “paying companies for services” and writing it off as a business loss, when in fact he owned those other companies as well. (This is a classic scheme within visual kei, though on a much smaller scaleーlabels often pay design companies, livehouses, etc that they themselves own.)

In total, Misaki Yuutaーwho apparently claimed to make about the same as a minimum wage worker through his various schemesーis accused of having evaded at least 180,000,000 yen (≈ 1,800,000 USD) in taxes.

Have you ever evaded taxes? Do you think Gackt is sweating right now?