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Alex Horton Brother, can you spare a gigantic gold coin?
Hundreds of special German police officers executed raids across several buildings across southern Berlin, nabbing four suspects in the hunt for a 100kg gold coin valued at about US$3.9 million.
It was stolen from Berlin’s Bode Museum in March, where it had been since 2010.
The police, who conducted the raids wearing masks and strapped with heavy weapons, are questioning nine others in connection with the missing coin. The four main suspects are related and between 18 and 20 years old. The coin was not recovered in the operation.
“We assume that the coin was partially or completely sold,” Carsten Pfohl of the Berlin state criminal office said. Police are picking apart clothes and vehicles used by the suspects to find traces of gold left behind.
The orchestrated raid is the latest wrinkle in the coin’s journey from Canada to the Bode to the hands of at least two thieves, who stole the coin in a brazen night-time heist on March 27.
An elevated railroad near the building aided the burglars, who used a ladder to climb into a museum window and slip into the exhibit. Police said an insider may have helped identify the coin, which was stolen as other exhibitions remain untouched. The museum, with more than 500,000 items, is home to one of the world’s largest coin collections. The thieves loaded the 3cm-thick, 53cm-diameter coin into a wheelbarrow, slipped into a park using a rope and fled in a getaway car.
The coin, bearing the head of the Queen with an obverse bearing a maple leaf is a reproduction of the original, which was produced by The Royal Canadian Mint in 2007 with a face value of C$1 million. Nicknamed “The Big Maple Leaf,” the Guinness Book of World Records named it the world’s largest coin.