A break-in looks like the work of a professional.
It began just after midnight on November 22, 2022, when someone cut fiber optic cables at a telecommunications center in the small German town of Manching in Bavaria, knocking out Internet and telephone connections in 13,000 homes.
Then, just before 1:30, the Celtic and Roman Museum was broken into. Within nine minutes, the thieves opened two locked doors and a display case, police said.
When museum staff arrived in the morning, they found the building’s most valuable artefact missing: a collection of 483 ancient gold coins, believed to date back nearly 100 years to the birth of Jesus.
The coins, along with the stolen gold bars, could be worth $1.7 million, though less if melted down, an official said.
On Thursday, Bavarian state criminal police said they had arrested four suspects in the burglary after a DNA trace was found on an unspecified object at the scene following a months-long investigation by a 25-member task force.
“The arrest of this gang of professional thieves is the result of extremely committed and meticulous work by the police and the public prosecutor’s office,” Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said in a statement. “The investigation into the whereabouts of the gold hoard will continue at full speed.”
Guido Limmer, deputy chief of Bavaria’s state criminal police office, told reporters in Munich that authorities had examined 18 gold bars seized this week, the Associated Press reported.
Each is believed to be the result of four coins being melted down, he said.
“We know that around 70 gold coins have been irretrievably lost in their cultural and historical significance,” Bavaria’s state culture minister Markus Blume said, according to the AP.
The coins were discovered in 1999 during excavations at an ancient Celtic settlement known as the Oppidum of Manching.
Considered the largest hoard of ancient Celtic gold discovered in the 20th century. Why so much gold was collected in one place and how it ended up at the site remains a mystery.
The coins are the pride of the Celtic and Roman Museum, where a small archaeological institute exhibits them and other artefacts found in the area.
After the coins were stolen, investigators, including a police dive team, conducted an extensive search around the museum, Bavarian police said in a statement.
During that search, two blue crowbars, pruning shears and a cutting tool were found in a nearby pond and in the Paar River, the statement said. Investigators also found a radio antenna next to the museum.
The items were subjected to forensic examination and a DNA sample was obtained, the statement said.
Investigators entered the sample into national DNA databases in Germany and neighboring countries and found matches with similar thefts across Germany and Austria, the statement said.
In several of those thefts, cables were also cut to bypass the alarm system. The thefts have other similarities, the statement said.
The thieves wore black overalls with balaclavas and each had an angle grinder with matching crowbars, screwdrivers and several cutting discs, the statement said, without explaining how investigators gathered those details. Burglars have also used radio jammers to disrupt alarm systems.
Investigators reviewed each of the theft case files, which led to a 42-year-old man from Schwerin in northern Germany. He is believed to have been involved in a burglary in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2018, Bavarian police said.
Further investigation led police to a 46-year-old German man and a 50-year-old man, who live in Schwerin.
Three people were arrested on Tuesday, police said, after one of them met a 43-year-old man from Berlin who was carrying 18 gold bars in a plastic bag. He was also arrested.
Analysis of the ingots showed a mixture of gold, silver and copper that matched the composition of the stolen gold coins, officials said.
The four men have been charged with aggravated gang theft involving damaged property and disruption of telecommunications systems, the statement said.
Their names have not been released and it was not immediately clear if they have an attorney.
As part of the investigation, police searched more than two dozen apartments, businesses, garden plots, a boathouse and a vehicle, the statement said.
They seized masks, “burglary tools,” backpacks, mobile phones, jammers and cash, the statement continued.
Although officials have not released much information about jammers, according to the Federal Communications Commission, such devices can be used to block 911 calls, cellphone service, police radar and global positioning systems.