Official: Organized crime likely behind Celtic gold heist

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

2 hours ago

BERLIN (AP) — A senior official in southern Germany said Wednesday that organized crime groups were likely behind the theft of a huge horde of ancient gold coins stolen from a museum this week.

The 483 coins were discovered in 1999 during excavations of an ancient settlement near the present-day town of Manchning and were on display at the local Celtic and Roman Museum.

“It’s clear that you don’t simply march into a museum and take this treasure with you,” Bavaria’s minister of science and arts, Markus Blume, told public broadcaster BR. “It’s highly secured and as such there’s a suspicion that we’re rather dealing with a case of organized crime.”

Blume said that all of the museum’s security systems, along with Manching’s entire telephone network, had been disabled during the heist.



FILE -- Coins of the Celtic Treasure are on display at the local Celtic and Roman Museum in Manching, Germany, May 31, 2006. A senior official said Wednesday that organized crime groups were likely behind the theft of a huge horde of ancient gold coins stolen from a museum in southern Germany this week. (Frank Maechler/dpa via AP, file)


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/travel-europe-germany-e6bb0cdbd6f161fb3212c0fb1171a34a?utm_source=Connatix&utm_medium=HomePage

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The theft story is here: https://apnews.com/article/europe-germany-munich-3df895007322d5feed2dec8563a51d90