Four men who stole Celtic gold coins worth 1.5 million euros from a Celtic-Roman museum in Bavaria in 2022 have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from four to eleven years. They were also convicted of twenty other offenses.
In total, four men stood trial. According to the judge, there was insufficient evidence to prove that one man was involved in the art theft. However, like the other three, he was convicted of twenty other burglaries and attempted burglaries in Germany and Austria. They stole, among other things, the contents of safes and ATMs.
The three who were found guilty of the museum theft stole a total of 483 Celtic gold coins at the end of 2022. The coins are more than two thousand years old and, according to experts, unique. The perpetrators had first damaged the telecommunications network around the museum. As a result, the police were not immediately reachable during the robbery.
Despite the convictions, the gold treasure has not yet been recovered. The perpetrators remained silent during the trial. One of them had pieces of gold with him at the time of the arrest. Presumably, those were molten coins.
The gold coins were discovered in 1999 in the German municipality of Manching, where a large Celtic settlement once lay. Art historians call it the largest Celtic gold find of the century. The coins were the showpiece of the museum in Manching.