Mobster sentenced to prison for stealing £98m of German jewels

Five people have been sentenced to prison for stealing jewelry. Photo: Reuters

Five members of a prominent mafia family were imprisoned for one of the most daring robberies in recent German history — the theft of diamond-encrusted jewelry collected by the Saxon monarchy.

All men under the age of 30 were sentenced to four to six years' imprisonment. about their role in the robbery of the Green Vault Museum in Dresden by the city court on Tuesday.

During the trial, the men detailed how they came up with the idea to rob the museum after a friend visited it on a school field trip. The men are close relatives and share the surname Remmo.

German investigators say the Remmo family is one of the most powerful Mafia families in Berlin. He is suspected of involvement in drug trafficking and a series of bank robberies.

The men received relatively light sentences after striking a deal with authorities late last year in which they returned 18 of the 21 jewelry and made confessions.

The men received relatively light sentences after returning most of the booty. Photo: Reuters Thieves stole a catch worth more than 113 million euros Photo: AFP

The length of the prison sentence has been criticized from some quarters, with the Berlin prosecutor's office saying it will encourage the mafia to act «more aggressively» in the future.

However, the Dresden police said they would never see the historical gems again if didn't make a deal with the thieves.

Investigators described the heist as «part Sunday league, part Champions League» due to the perpetrators mixing meticulous preparation with amateur mistakes.

Their meticulous preparation was to cut the window bars a week before and glue them in place.

They also disguised their getaway car as a taxi, knowing reasonably that the police would be less likely to control a taxi than a private vehicle.

One of the artifacts stolen from the Royal Palace, which houses the historic Green Vault. Photo: AFP

But some of the thieves were not wearing gloves when they smashed the museum's windows, which means they left DNA traces that turned out to be clues to the subsequent investigation.

The jewel find included a breast star of the Polish Order of the White An eagle and a diamond-studded headdress collected in the 18th century by Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony.

The thieves did not seem to be able to sell much of their booty on the black market and returned most of it, albeit in a damaged condition.

The ringleader Wissam Remmo confessed to an equally high-profile robbery of a 100-kilogram gold coin from a Berlin museum.