The theft took place in November 2022 at the Celtic and Roman museum in the German town of Manching, outside Ingolstadt.
The coins are from around 100 years before Christ and weighed a total of nearly four kilos. They were excavated in 1999 and are said to be the largest find of Celtic coins found throughout the entire 20th century. The coins are worth the equivalent of nearly 15 million kronor. Of the loot, only half a kilo of melted gold has been recovered.
The perpetrators could be identified through DNA traces on tools that they left behind at the crime scene.
The men, all around 50 years old, were sentenced to prison for between four years and nine months and 11 years, one of the men was however sentenced for several other thefts. They belong to a gang that has made itself guilty of a number of other thefts in Germany and Austria.
The verdict corresponds to "an irreparable loss of invaluable cultural history", the court writes in its judgment.
