It is the night of March 27, 2017: between 3:20 am and 3:50 am, masked figures penetrate the Berlin Bode Museum through an unsecured window. They have a ladder, rope, roller board, wheelbarrow, door wedges and the handle of an ax with them.
The perpetrators are targeting the Big Maple Leaf gold coin. There are only five copies worldwide. The gold content of the giant coin: 99.999 percent.
Actually, all the windows in the museum are alarmed. Except for one thing: the window to the changing room. The perpetrators apparently got the knowledge about it from an insider. Denis W. had started as a security guard at the museum a few days earlier. He has close contacts with a well-known large Arab family in Berlin.
One of the thieves, the police and public prosecutor later determine, was Ahmed Remmo.
The investigators found gold shavings on clothing.
His fingerprints are on a slip of paper with notes that the court interprets as notes on the division of the booty.
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DNA from another member of the family, Wissam Remmo, was found on the rope that the thieves left behind at the scene. Splinters of glass and gold stuck to a glove from his apartment. The glass splinters match the showcase in which the coin was displayed.
The 9th Large Criminal Chamber of the Berlin Regional Court convicted the men of theft in a particularly serious case. Denis W., the security guard, is imprisoned for three years and four months, Wissam and Ahmed Remmo for four years and six months. The Chamber applied juvenile justice to all three of the defendants. Denis W. was 18 years old at the time of the crime, Wissam 20 and Ahmed 19. There is still no trace of their prey.
How could members of a well-known clan get into the highly secured building unnoticed?
How did the perpetrators transport the 100 kilo coin out of the museum?
And: who were the supporters?
The questions are answered in the third episode of this podcast.