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By DAVID RISING, Related Press
BERLIN (AP) — Berlin police raided properties and jewellery outlets Wednesday on suspicion they might be linked to efforts to fence a large 100-kilogram (220-pound) Canadian gold coin — piece by piece — that was stolen from a museum within the German capital.
The coin, with an estimated worth of three.75 million euros ($4.45 million) was stolen from Berlin’s Bode Museum in 2017 and has not but been recovered.
The morning raids have been targeted on eight suspects, aged between 14 and 51, of varied nationalities, police mentioned.
They’re alleged to have been a part of a hoop that obtained stolen gold to soften it down and forge collector cash, then promote them as real by way of jewellery shops operated by them or their family members. A number of the counterfeits are already circulating, police mentioned.
The searches led to the invention of counterfeit cash, forgery instruments and a “five-digit” sum of money, police mentioned.
“The analysis of the proof is ongoing,” police mentioned. “Amongst different issues, a potential connection to the theft of the gold coin from the Bode Museum is being be examined.”
Berlin prosecutors mentioned there have been no arrests however that the investigation was persevering with.
The searches got here simply two days after the arrest of a key suspect within the spectacular theft of 18th-century jewels from a Dresden museum final yr, who’s from a criminal offense household linked to the Canadian gold coin theft.
Mohamed Remmo, 21, was arrested by Berlin authorities in a automobile within the Neukoelln district of the town on Monday night. His twin brother, Abdul Majed Remmo, stays on the lam.
Police and prosecutors wouldn’t touch upon whether or not there was a connection between the arrest and the searches, however members of the identical household have been convicted earlier this yr for the Canadian gold coin theft.
Cousins Ahmed Remmo and Wissam Remmo, together with a good friend who labored as a safety guard on the museum, have been all convicted of that Canadian gold coin heist and sentenced to a number of years in jail.
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