Coins of the Celtic Treasure are on display at the local Celtic and Roman Museum in Manching, Germany, May 31, 2006. (Frank Maechler/dpa via AP, file) Frank Maechler / AP

Three men were convicted Tuesday in the theft of hundreds of ancient gold coins from a German museum in 2022 and handed prison sentences ranging up to 11 years.

A court in the southern city of Ingolstadt convicted the defendants of gang robbery over the museum heist, German news agency dpa reported. A fourth defendant was acquitted of involvement in the museum heist but convicted of other thefts carried out by the group.

The suspects from northern Germany were arrested months after a Nov. 22, 2022, break-in at the Celtic and Roman Museum in the Bavarian town of Manching, in which 483 Celtic coins discovered during a 1999 archaeological dig were stolen. The coins dated to around 100 B.C.

The coins and a lump of unworked gold were originally discovered during excavations of an ancient settlement in Manching, and authorities have said they are considered the biggest trove of Celtic gold found in the 20th century.

The heist took place in just nine minutes, investigators said. At 1:17 a.m., cables were cut at a telecoms hub nearby, leaving the region without communications networks. The museum's door was pried open at 1:26 a.m. The thieves left the building at 1:35 a.m., officials said, leaving them just a few minutes to smash open a display case and take the treasure. No alarms were triggered during the incident. The museum did not have an overnight guard.

Most of the stolen treasure is still missing, but investigators found lumps of gold on one of the suspects when he was arrested that appear to have resulted from part of the treasure being melted down. Rupert Gebhard, the head of the Bavarian State Archaeological Collection in Munich, said in 2022 that seeing the coins melted down would be "the worst option."

The four defendants were accused of a total of 20 break-ins or attempted robberies in Germany and neighboring Austria, starting in 2014. Other cases involved safes or cash machines being broken into.

The defendants didn't address the charges during the roughly six-month trial, but their lawyers called for their acquittal.

The court sentenced them to prison terms ranging from four years and nine months to 11 years.

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