Was Sarku Japan hit by ransomware?

Sarku Japan was listed by the thegentlemen ransomware operation (United States), and stolen data was published on the group's leak site. Darkfield tracks this disclosure with the original leak post, screenshot and group context.

Who is the thegentlemen ransomware group?

thegentlemen is a ransomware operator tracked by Darkfield. See the full operator dossier for its known victims, sectors targeted, IOCs and leak-site infrastructure.

What data was leaked in the Sarku Japan breach?

thegentlemen published data attributed to Sarku Japan. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Sarku Japan

Claimed by Thegentlemen · listed 20 hours ago

Today

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedSep 15, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Thegentlemen
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Retail & E-Commerce
Listed on leak site: Sep 15, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Sarku Japan operates a chain of Japanese fast-casual restaurants across the USA, specializing in teriyaki, bento, and sushi offerings. The company also operates Kato's Cajun as a sister brand and offers franchise opportunities. With multiple locations nationwide, approximately 150 staff, and 120,000+ monthly site visitors, Sarku Japan is a significant player in the casual dining sector.

Industry: Fast Casual Dining & Japanese Restaurants
Employees: 150
Founded: 1993

Attack summary

Severity: low — No proof files or data samples are advertised in the post. No specific data categories are claimed to have been compromised. The post appears to be primarily a listing/announcement without substantiation of actual data theft or encryption.

The group claims to have accessed Sarku Japan's systems and published data. No specific details are provided in the leak post regarding what data was exfiltrated or encrypted, or the scope of operational impact.

low

What the group claims

sarkujapan.com zoominfo.com/c/sarku-japan/33898946 SARKU Japan Japan's #1 independent service & wholesale network for foreign cars — founded 1993 in Chiba by Texan David J. Jones (in Japan since 1989) after seeing that owners of European/American cars in Japan were "orphans": parts take 6–8 weeks from Europe, service is scarce. SARKU built the full foreign-car infrastructure: 9 service centers (8 Kanto + Nagoya), a wholesale yard of ~4,000 imported cars (one of Japan's two largest), a parts warehouse of 30,000+ SKUs worth ¥700M+ (also one of Japan's two largest), plus procurement/export arms via US offices in Seattle (since 1997) and Florida — selling 20,000+ cars and serving 60,000+ active customers (~150 staff from 15 countries; ~120K monthly site visitors, 170K+ downloaded car-buying guides). Since 2018 it's owned by the Netherlands' Louwman Group (Europe's largest family-run dealer group, est. 1923). Motto: "Foreign cars. Japanese precision."

Sources

Victim sitesarkujapan.com

Source

Indexed 20 hours ago

This page surfaces a public ransomware disclosure indexed by Darkfield. Original posts come from the operator's own leak site; we cross-check against ransomware.live, RansomLook and RansomWatch where applicable. Share this URL freely.

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Disclosure context

About thegentlemen

thegentlemen is a ransomware group that emerged in September 2025, operating with apparent financial motivations based on their broad targeting of commercial sectors. The group has documented 267 victims across multiple countries, with primary focus on the United States, Thailand, France, Brazil, and India. Their targeting strategy demonstrates a preference for high-value sectors including manufacturing, technology, healthcare, and financial services organizations. Given the group's recent emergence and limited public documentation from established threat intelligence sources such as CISA, FBI, or major security research firms, specific details regarding their country of origin, operational structure, attack methodologies, encryption techniques, and whether they employ ransomware-as-a-service models remain unclear. The relatively high victim count of 267 in a short operational timeframe since September 2025 suggests either an aggressive campaign pace or potential inflation of victim numbers through affiliate operations, though without corroborating intelligence reports, the group's exact operational capabilities and notable campaigns cannot be definitively established. Current intelligence indicates the group remains active as of late 2025, though comprehensive threat profiling requires additional validated reporting from authoritative cybersecurity sources. The group has been linked to 868 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 9, 2025; most recent post September 15, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: the gentlemen.

Timeline of this disclosure

September 15, 2026Sarku Japan listed by thegentlemen on the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by thegentlemen

thegentlemen has been linked to 868 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full thegentlemen dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Retail & E-Commerce sector, which has 21 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Sarku Japan is reported in United States, a country with 3,165 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by thegentlemen means Sarku Japan appeared on a ransomware extortion site and data attributed to it has been published. If this is your organisation, or a supplier you depend on, the priority is to confirm the intrusion and contain it before the window to act closes.

Engage your incident-response team and preserve forensic evidence before remediating — do not wipe affected systems first.
Force a password reset and revoke active sessions for exposed accounts; rotate any credentials, API keys or certificates that may have been in the stolen data.
Assess regulatory notification duties (GDPR, NIS2, sector regulators) — many carry a 72-hour reporting clock from awareness.
Report the incident to your national CERT, CISA (United States), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on thegentlemen's leak site and across paste and breach channels, and brief downstream partners who may be exposed through you.

How we know this. Darkfield monitors public ransomware leak sites continuously, archiving every new disclosure and the data later released against the victim. Each entry on this page is sourced from the operator's own publication and cross-checked against complementary OSINT feeds (RansomLook, ransomware.live, RansomWatch). We do not collect or host stolen data — only the metadata, timestamps and screenshots needed to make the public disclosure searchable and accountable. Records here are corrected when the original post is edited, retracted, or merged with another disclosure.