A German court on Tuesday sentenced five members of a criminal gang to up to six years in prison for snatching priceless 18th-century jewels from a Dresden museum in what local media have dubbed the biggest art heist in modern history.
The thieves are members of the so-called “Remmo clan”, an extended family known for a web of ties to organised crime in Germany. A sixth defendant was acquitted because he produced a credible alibi — an emergency surgery at a Berlin hospital. The loot included a sword with a diamond-encrusted hilt and a shoulder piece which contained the famous 49-carat Dresden white diamond.
In a statement read in court in January by their lawyer, they said the idea for the Dresden job was hatched after a younger acquaintance “came back from a field trip to the Green Vault… raving about the green diamonds on display there”.The court found that the defendants, aged between 24 and 29, slipped into the museum through previously damaged bars on a window, broke a display case with an axe and grabbed 21 pieces encrusted with 4,300 jewels in less than five minutes.
That was until December 2022, when authorities said they had recovered a “considerable portion” of the items following “exploratory talks” with the suspects.