Germany – Germany’s central bank – the Bundesbank – has allegedly been scammed for millions with a scheme involving the recycling of damaged Euro coins that had been sent to China as scrap metal.
The scam unravelled when a stewardess on a Lufthansa airplane was reportedly found by customs officers with thousands of coins in her bag. Six people have been arrested – four of whom are from China.
According to prosecutors, a gang reassembled coins that had been broken up and used Lufthansa cabin crews to smuggle them back into Germany because airline employees do not have weight limits on their bags. At least six million Euros worth of coins was involved, they added.
Old Euro coins are broken up into their inner and outer rings, turning them into scrap metal. Doris Möller-Scheu at the Frankfurt prosecutors office comments: ‘Initially, we believed that the coins had been reassembled in China. But searching the suspects’ premises, we found a machine for putting them back together here in Germany.’
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