Three men have been sentenced to prison for stealing hundreds of ancient gold coins from a museum in southern Germany.
The court in Ingolstadt found the men guilty of organized robbery following a high-profile heist at the Celtic and Roman Museum in Manching in November 2022.
Their prison terms range from four years and nine months to 11 years.
A fourth man, although cleared of taking part in the museum theft, was convicted for separate crimes involving theft and break-ins.
The stolen items included 483 Celtic gold coins and a lump of raw gold, all dating back to around 100 B.C.
These artifacts were unearthed during a 1999 archaeological dig and are among the most important finds of Celtic gold in the 20th century.
On the night of the theft, the group managed to disable communications by cutting cables at a nearby telecommunications hub.
This knocked out the local alarm systems and allowed them to break into the museum and leave within just nine minutes, all without setting off any alerts.
Most of the treasure remains missing.
However, authorities did recover some melted gold fragments during the arrest of one suspect, raising fears that parts of the collection may have been destroyed.
The four men, who are from northern Germany, were connected to a broader criminal operation involving a total of 20 burglaries or attempted thefts across Germany and Austria since 2014.
These earlier crimes mostly involved safes and cash machines.
During the six-month trial, none of the defendants gave statements regarding the museum theft.
Their lawyers argued for acquittal, but the court ruled otherwise based on the evidence.