A trove of ancient Celtic gold coins worth millions was stolen from a German museum, police revealed Tuesday.
State police in Bavaria said thieves made off with 483 coins and a lump of gold from the Celtic and Roman Museum in Manching, Germany, after making it in and out of the building in less than ten minutes – and all without alerting authorities to their presence.
Per a preliminary investigation, the thieves pulled off the expert caper by disabling the power – and not just to the alarms connecting the museum to police, but to “the whole of Manching,” Mayor Herbert Nerb reportedly told a local media outlet.
Police say at just past 1 a.m. on Tuesday, the bandits snipped a cable at a telecoms hub and severed over 1,000 local connections, then broke into the museum and made off with the stash of gold, before finally vanishing into the night – all within under 20 minutes from start to finish.
Police quickly determined the telecoms attack was likely linked to an attempted robbery, but they misjudged the target. Instead of sending patrol cars to the museums, officers ended up at local banks instead.
The Bavarian minister of science and arts, Markus Blume, described “the loss of the Celtic treasure” as a “disaster,” noting that “as a testament to our history, the gold coins are irreplaceable.”
Highlighting the “incredible criminal energy” of the perpetrators, Blume claimed the heist was likely to be the work of trained professionals.
“It’s clear that you don’t simply march into a museum and take this treasure with you,” he reportedly told a German public broadcaster. “It’s highly secured and as such there’s a suspicion that we’re rather dealing with a case of organized crime.”