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Written by Beatrix | Thursday, March 25th, 2010
Recently it was reported that a gang of men in masks robbed the European Poker Tournament Berlin and got off with €242,000 in cash. It has now been confirmed that the four men responsible for the robbery and the mastermind behind the plot are in police custody in Germany, though the cash has not been recovered.
The theft took place at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Berlin on March 6th, 2010, but no one was reprehended that night, and the robbers made off with the loot. However, they were forced to leave behind €600,000 in additional cash in a bag, as they fought off security. Rainer Wendt, head of police union in Germany, later declared that the thieves were an amateur group who had “plunged to new depths of stupidity,” leaving behind “a mountain of evidence.”
Wendt was right. Not long after the heist, on March 15th, a 21-year-old man from Germany confessed in person at the police station. With his lawyer by his side, he also indicated his accomplices, Jihad Khaled Chetwie, age 19, Ahmad el-Awayti, age 20, and Mustafa Ucarkus, also age 20, all of whom were then arrested. Two of them had to be flown back from Istanbul and Beirut to Germany after international arrest warrants were submitted on them.
Additionally, the “brains behind the operation,” a 28-year-old Lebanese man, was also arrested. The statement from the police spokesperson said, “According to the current state of our investigation, the suspect is thought to have been the organizer and brains behind the operation. He also drove the getaway car.”
While the whole case has been handled pretty well by German officials, no one has been able to locate the stolen loot, which is equivalent to about $327,000 in US$. It did make things easy on police though, that one of the men confessed. Had he not, they may have all just gotten away with it.
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Written by Beatrix · Filed Under news · |
