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German court sentences 5 to prison for $100 million jewelry heist

The 2019 break-in at the Green Vault Museum in the eastern German city of Dresden led to the theft of 21 pieces of jewelry containing more than 4,300 diamonds.
A German court on Tuesday May 16, 2023, convicted five men of particularly aggravated arson in combination with dangerous bodily injury, theft with weapons, damage to property and intentional arson in the spectacular theft of 18th-century jewels from the Dresden museum in 2019.
Investigators outside the Residenzschloss Palace in Dresden, Germany, on Nov. 25, 2019.Sebastian Kahnert / AP file
/ Source: The Associated Press

A German court on Tuesday convicted five men over the theft of 18th century jewels worth more than $100 million from a Dresden museum in 2019.

They were sentenced to prison sentences of between four years and four months and six years and three months, German news agency dpa reported. One defendant was acquitted.

The Dresden state court ruled that the five men — ages 24 to 29 — were responsible for the break-in at the eastern German city’s Green Vault Museum on Nov. 25, 2019, and the theft of 21 pieces of jewelry containing more than 4,300 diamonds, with a total insured value of at least 113.8 million euros ($129 million).

Officials said at the time that the items included a large diamond brooch and a diamond epaulette.

They were convicted of particularly aggravated arson in combination with dangerous bodily injury, theft with weapons, damage to property and intentional arson.

The men laid a fire just before the break-in to cut the power supply to streetlights outside the museum and also set fire to a car in a nearby garage before fleeing to Berlin. They were caught several months later in raids in Berlin.

Defendants sit on May 16, 2023 at the Higher Regional Court in Dresden, eastern Germany, prior to a hearing in the trial over a jewellery heist on the Green Vault (Gruenes Gewoelbe) museum in Dresden's Royal Palace in November 2019.
The court convicted five members of a criminal gang of snatching priceless 18th century jewels from the museum and handed down sentences of up to six years in prison.Sebastian Kahnert / AFP - Getty Images

In January, there was a plea bargain amothe ng the defense, prosecution and the court after most of the stolen jewels were returned.

The plea bargain had been agreed to by four defendants, who subsequently admitted their involvement in the crime through their lawyers. The fifth defendant also confessed, but only to the procurement of objects such as the axes used to make holes in the museum display case, dpa reported.

The state of Saxony, where Dresden is located, had claimed damages of almost 89 million euros in court — for the pieces that were returned damaged, for those still missing and for repairs to the destroyed display cases and the museum building.

The Green Vault is one of the world’s oldest museums. It was established in 1723 and contains the treasury of Augustus the Strong of Saxony, comprising around 4,000 objects of gold, precious stones and other materials.