Further Developments in Case of the Manching Hoard Theft

Police have arrested some men who are accused of stealing a hoard of 483 gold Bohemian Celtic coins of the first and second centuries B.C. from the Kelten Römer Museum in Manching, near Ingolstadt, in November 2022. It was discovered by an archaeological team in 1999 and was the biggest Celtic gold find of the 20th century. The market worth of the coins is about €250,000 [Catherine Hickley, 'Suspects arrested in theft of gold coins from German museum' The Art Newspaper 20 July 2023]

Four men suspected of stealing a trove of Celtic gold coins from a museum north of Munich last year have been arrested, Bavarian police officials said. The men, aged between 42 and 50 years old, were traced to the area surrounding the city of Schwerin in northern Germany and to Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia, and arrested during a police search of 28 residential premises, business premises, a boathouse and vehicles on Tuesday, police said. One of the men was found with lumps of gold of the same composition as the coins in a plastic bag, a police statement said. That suggests the suspects melted down at least a part of the treasure [...] "Seventy of these coins have been irreparably lost," said Markus Blume, the Bavarian art minister. "There is still hope of finding the rest."

Investigators are still searching premises in the Schwerin area and using metal detectors to search large properties with grounds where the remaining coins could have been reburied.

DNA traces link three of the suspects to eight further burglaries dating back to 2014 in Germany and in Austria, involving supermarkets, a casino, petrol stations and a cash dispenser. It is possible that the same team is responsible for many more crimes dating back to the 1990s, officials said. “We are dealing with professional burglars,” said Joachim Herrmann, the Bavarian interior minister. In Manching and in several of the other crimes, fibre optic cables were cut so that alarm systems would not be able to alert police of break-ins by telephone. One of the arrested suspects is employed as a telecommunications engineer, said Nicolas Kaczynski, the Ingolstadt prosecutor.