I see a couple of things to comment here.
To begin with, there are those who believe that if you get money in your account by mistake, you have the right to spend it. False. You have to pay it back.
The man in the story has all the appearance of being a problem gambler, and the saddest thing is that he spent what was originally intended for low-income households, but you can see at the end of the news that the authorities have sent them the money back without waiting for the man in the story to return it.
At least the story has had a happy ending, now the man has to pay back the money.
I agree, at least the townspeople still got the help they need. also, the man is being sued by the town(which I think is a good thing) despite him saying that he will pay back the money he gambled that was mistakenly sent to him.
anyway, it was kind of weird that the authorities took two weeks before they contacted him.
so i thought japanese people are all honest. but there will always be outliers. the man's action of spending it rather than look for the rightful owner, maybe owed to his gambling lifestyle. because he saw it as good opportunity to use, he never resorted to sending it back. but at least he is accepting the consequences of his actions. with this yet another gambling story, it shows that when you are deep in gambling, your decisions become out of logic, hence, why many people are not looking at gambling in a positive way.
The Japanese really have a special national mentality.
From childhood, the Japanese are taught to follow the rules. This is a feature of the thousands of years of isolated life of the Japanese on the islands.
If you live in isolation from strangers, then all the people around you are your distant and close relatives. And in relation to relatives there is always a moral duty.
Nevertheless, addiction to gambling greatly transforms the moral standards of the player.
This is the similarity between gambling addiction and drug addiction and alcoholism.