A combined image shows stolen books recovered from an unknown location.
A rare 240-pound treasure worth over $ 3.3 million was returned to its owners after it was stolen in London by a gang of Romanian men who rappelled from the ceiling of a warehouse to avoid to trigger alarms.
The men, who were jailed in Britain last month, have been dubbed the gang “Mission: Impossible” by British media because of their acrobatic technique, which is reminiscent of a famous scene from the 1996 film in which Tom Cruise is descended into a safe on a rope.
The ancient books, considered to be of international cultural significance, include works by English scientist Isaac Newton and Spanish artist Francisco Goya and relating to Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, the Metropolitan Police said.
The heist took place in January 2017 at a warehouse in Feltham, west London, where the books, which belonged to specialist dealers and had been shipped from Italy and Germany, were being stored en route to a lounge of the American book.
After drilling holes in the perimeter fence to access the warehouse, burglars drilled holes in skylights in the roof and lowered themselves onto shelves, avoiding activating the sensor-based alarms located near the doors.
The heist was one of 12 carried out by the gang, linked to organized crime group Clamparu based in the Iasi region of eastern Romania at various locations in Britain over a two-and-a-half-year period .
In meticulously planned operations, gang members would fly around the country to commit burglaries, and then fly away soon after. Twelve of them were jailed for terms ranging from three years and eight months to five years and eight months.
The London Metropolitan Police have worked on the case for more than three years with counterparts in Romania and Italy.
After the books were discovered hidden underground in a house in Romania, they were transported to the country’s National Library in Bucharest, where four of the five owners went last month to retrieve them.
“It was nice to see the joy of every victim to find these irreplaceable books,” Detective Inspector Andy Durham said, adding that one of the booksellers, Alessandro Bado, responded by saying with great enthusiasm: “Tonight we drink like lions. “
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
