In 2004, the Austrian Mint minted a €1,000 coin that weighed 31.1 kilograms and measured 37 centimetres in diameter.
A total of 15 coins were minted, which honoured the Austrian Philharmonic Orchestra, earning the nickname of “Big Phil”.
One side featured orchestra instrument.
The other side had the Great Organ of the Golden Hall, found in Vienna’s famed Musikverein concert hall.
The coins were so large that polishing machines couldn’t handle them, and each had to be polished by hand.
They were the largest coins ever produced.
But then Canada said… hold my beer.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today I bring you the story of the Big Maple Leaf that once held a Guinness World Record, and the incredible heist that followed!
The first Province of Canada coins were struck in 1858 by the Royal Mint in London, England which produced all of Canada’s coins for the next 50 years. That worked for the most part.
Canada wasn’t heavily populated at the time so there was no need for mass production.
As population increased and new immigrants arrived in Canada went from 3.4 million people in 1867 to almost 5 million by 1890.
More people meant more coinage The idea of a Royal Mint branch in Ottawa emerged, but the British dragged their feet for over a decade until 1901, when Canada’s population was now pushing near six million.
It took seven years for the Royal Mint branch in Ottawa to be constructed.
On a momentous Jan. 2, 1908, Governor General Lord Grey and his wife Lady Grey activated the press, and a 50-cent coin was struck.
It was the first on Canadian soil.
Over the next twenty years the Royal Mint branch in Ottawa expanded.
In 1931, Canada signed the Statute of Westminster, which increased the autonomy of the British Commonwealth’s Dominions.
It is often cited as the moment Canada truly became an independent nation.
The landmark Statute transferred the Royal Mint branch’s assets to the Canadian government.
In December 1931, the Royal Canadian Mint was established through an Act of Parliament.
Since then, the Royal Canadian Mint has become pretty good at making coins.
(PAUSE MUSIC TRANSITION)
The Royal Canadian Mint became so good they changed the game in 1982.
They produced a series of coins that were 99.99 percent pure gold.
Known as the Maple Leaf coins, they set a standard for gold coins at the time.
Did you know there are awards for coins?
I didn’t until I started researching this episode, but the Royal Canadian Mint has a whole slew of them.
The Mint first won the World Coin News Coin of the Year in 1985 for a $20 coin in honour of the upcoming 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics.
From then on, the Mint won 11 Coin of the Years until 2002.
They had an incredible winning streak from 1993 to 1998, winning every Coin of the Year except in 1995.
And what happens when you become great at something?
You look for a new challenge.
When the people at the Royal Canadian Mint saw that giant coin created in Austria, they decided to create the greatest gold coin the world had ever seen… one that would put all others to shame.
The Royal Canadian Mint didn’t just want to beat the Austrian record.
They wanted to blow it out of the water.
Royal Canadian Mint chief technology officer Xianyao Li had only one thing to say.
“It is impossible.”
The Mint would not be limited.
Work began on making the impossible… possible in early 2007.
For three months, the Royal Canadian Mint worked to create a giant gold coin.
It was so large there was no hydraulic coin press big enough or powerful enough to strike it.
To get around that, they had to create a mold that would be strong enough to handle molten gold being poured into it, but flexible enough for the coin to be removed after.
It took time to get it right.
Multiple casts were poured, scrapped, melted down and repoured.
It became a tradition among employees in the Royal Canadian Mint to watch the coin be poured and removed from the mold.
They were finally successful in May 2007 and the brand-new coin was a sight to behold.
It was 2.8 centimetre thick, 50-centimetre-wide of pure gold. The coin was the size of a car tire.
It weighed in at 100 kilograms three times more than the Austrian coin.
The Royal Canadian Mint really said Go big or go home.
One side featured Queen Elizabeth II in an image created by Canadian portrait artist Susanna Blunt.
It did not feature a crown or tiara, and the artist described it was to show the Queen’s quote,
“maturing dignity”.
On the reverse side, the coin had a stylized maple leaf created by Royal Canadian Mint artist and senior engraver Stan Witten.
And when said it was made out of pure gold… I meant it.
Raw gold is not pure. It contains many other elements from silver to zirconium.
This coin was so pure that there were less than ten parts per million of other elements in the gold.
It was the purest in history at 99.999 percent purity.
David Madge, the Royal Canadian Mint’s director of bullion, said,
“We wanted to raise the bar so that we could say the government of Canada, or the Royal Canadian Mint produced the purest gold coins in the world.”
The coins had a face value of $1 million but would sell on the market for $3 million each as you can imagine they were not for the average consumer, but for collectors in precious metals.
Six coins were produced.
One went into the Royal Canadian Mint vault.
One was sent to the Barrick Gold Corporation, another to an Austrian investment firm.
One coin went to Queen Elizabeth II. I guess with her face it, so we kind of had to give her one.
Two went to coin collectors in Dubai.
According to some sources, one of those is now used as his coffee table.
That is quite the conversation starter.
The coin for the Austrian investment company found its way into the Bode Museum in Berlin. remained there for years.
Until…. four men showed up in the middle of the night with a wheelbarrow…[MIDROLL]
The Bode Museum in Berlin is one of the most prestigious museums in Germany.
Built from 1898 to 1904 under the direction of Emperor William II, it is part of what is known as Museum Island which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
It encompasses the Sculpture Collection, the Museum for Byzantine Art and The Münzkabinett (Numismatic Collection) which is one of the most significant collections of coins and medals in the world.
There are more than 500,000 pieces in the collection that date back to the very first coins ever minted in human history, including 100,000 Greek coins and 50,000 Roman coins.
In 2010, a new coin was added which took quite a journey to get there.
After purchasing the Big Maple Leaf coin in 2007, The Austrian investment firm hit a rough patch three years later.
The head of the company was arrested for fraud in 2010 and to recoup losses, the coin was sold for €3.27 million to Oro Direct Sales.
The Spanish precious metals company soon got into trouble as well.
In a raid, police found evidence of money laundering and illegal trading.
Just prior to that, a German entrepreneur named Boris Fuschmann offered to buy the coin from the company for €3.37 million. Almost as soon as he purchased it, the Bode Museum asked for it to be part of their Gold Giants exhibit.
And that’s how the Big Maple Leaf became the star attraction at the museum.
It was a perfect match and press coverage was massive.
Who could resist the largest coin ever minted, sitting in one of the largest coin collections in the world.
When the exhibit ended, the museum asked Fuschmann to make it a permanent fixture.
The Big Maple Leaf was finally settled in its new home.
For years people walked through the museum and saw the great coin with Queen Elizabeth II on one side and the maple leaf on another.
Thousands admired it, read the plaque detailing its story, and then moved on.
Except for one man.
A security guard by the name of Denis, last name simply given as W., walked by The Big Maple Leaf every day as he did his rounds.
The 20-years-old had started working at the museum in late February 2017.
Even if you knew nothing about coins, it was hard to ignore a coin made out of solid gold.
It’s imposing size immediately makes one think… wow this is worth a lot of money.
Working at the museum Denis would admire it, and he couldn’t help mentioning it to his former school friend, Ahmed Remmo.
Ahmed wasn’t just a friend from childhood, he also just happened to be connected to one of Germany’s most notorious crime families. The Remmos first came to police attention in 1992 with the murder of a restaurant owner in Berlin.
With an estimated 500 members it is one of Berlin’s most notorious gangs, with a long record of violence, drug trafficking, money laundering and fraud.
Denis’ understanding of the museum’s security and layout allowed him to hatch a plan with Ahmed, Ahmed’s brother Wayci and their cousin Wissam.
They planned to steal the Big Maple Leaf.
But soon after Denis began to work at the museum, they hit a speedbump.
In early-March 2017, Denis was pulled over by police after filling up his car with gas and taking off without paying.
A gas and dash as they say.
As the police officer talked to him, he noticed floor plans for the Bode Museum in the backseat of Denis’ car.
Further search found nylon gloves and screwdrivers in the trunk.
It wasn’t illegal to have any of those things, but that traffic stop would come back to haunt Denis a few weeks later.
Now, if you’re waiting for some elaborate Ocean’s Eleven style heist, guess again.
These thieves barely pulled this off.
It was more of a miracle than an actuality really.
On March 21, 2017, the men arrived at the museum under the cover of darkness.
They placed a ladder on the side of the building and climbed up the only second storey window. They removed the security glass over the window with screwdrivers.
The plan was to remove the glass and climb down into the employee locker room.
As they removed the bolts, the glass suddenly cracked.
The men panicked and fled but left their ladder behind.
The next day, another security guard noticed the ladder, and the cracked glass but didn’t think anything of it and just put in a repair order.
The repair wasn’t a priority, so for six days the thieves waited for another chance, but they were running out of time.
The thieves knew that.
the coin was scheduled to move about 3 kms away to the Berlin Kulturforum on March 27.
They knew they only really had one shot so between 3:20 and 3:50AM on March 27, 2017, Ahmed and Wissam Remmo, together with an unidentified accomplice, reached the top of the stairs, speed walked towards the end of the S-Bahn platform.
The three figures stepped off the platform, onto the track bed, and over to the service pathway running parallel to the tracks.
No passing trains would spot them, because they knew that the S-Bahn wouldn’t start up again until 4:13 a.m.
Beneath them is the Spree River, and ahead is the Bode Museum.
The three thieves arrived at a wall that once belonged to a support structure connecting the Bode to the Pergamon Museum next door.
The bridge is long gone but the wall led to the only second-floor window accessible from the outside.
The thieves used the ladder they had left behind This time; they successfully removed the rest of the bolts with screwdrivers and got inside through the open window.
They didn’t have to worry about an alarm on the window.
Denis had informed them one hadn’t worked since 2013 and had been turned off for the past four years.
They would have to be on the lookout for only one guard but at that time he would be doing rounds in another part of the museum.
The guard would be to their advantage, because although there were motion sensors, those were turned off when the guard did rounds to avoid setting them off.
With that knowledge, the men climbed down into the employee locker room with a skateboard, you will see why soon, and then quickly reached the door to the museum.
They jammed the door to keep it open and then hurried to the coin room.
The thieves walked past priceless coins from human history.
They had only one target in their sights.
The Big Maple Leaf.
The gold coin was protected by a glass case, but the thieves weren’t worried.
They had a plan for that too.
Glass cutting equipment?
Nope.
A fancy laser cutter so they could easily grab the coin and escape.
Nope.
One thief brought an axe, and he swung it like he was Paul Bunyan, straight into the glass case.
The thick glass case shattered into several pieces.
Some pieces were so heavy that they left gouges on the floor which can still be seen to this day.
The men grabbed the 100-kilogram coin and put it on a skateboard they brought with them.
The guard was still in another part of the building, and the thieves hadn’t been heard so they made their way back to the locker room.
As they did, their hefty cargo bumped into walls leaving deep cuts in the plaster.
The coin was so heavy that it flattened the tires of the trolley, leaving marks on the floor.
In the locker room, the four men lifted the coin up towards the window.
No pulley system needed.
With one final push, they shoved it out the window.
The coin worth a fortune fell to the ground below with a dull thud.
The men escaped out the window next and climbed down the ladder.
Next the thieves lifted the coin into a wheelbarrow, they had placed near their entry point several days earlier.
Security had thought nothing of it after the first attempt and now…the men used it and the skateboard to roll it away from the tracks to their getaway vehicle located in Monbijou Park, on the other bank of the River Spree.
They placed it in the trunk and then…the men drove off into the night.
The robbery of the gold coin the size of a tire took only 16 minutes
At 4 a.m., the guard at the museum walked back into the security room from doing his rounds.
He was a recent transfer to the museum but was not a rookie. He had eight years experience as a guard.
When he looked at the monitors in the security room, he saw several doors on the second floor open.
That stood out to him as odd because he was certain that he had closed them earlier.
He immediately radioed for security backup.
One of his colleagues from another museum arrived and saw the tire marks on the floor.
Then they saw the walls.
They followed the trail into the coin room.
Where they discovered broken glass.
The Big Maple was gone.
The guards made two phone calls.
One to the museum director, and the other to the Berlin Police.
When they rang Berlin Police, they stated that a coin had been stolen from the museum.
At first there was some confusion with half a million coins in the collection, how did they know one was missing, and how much would that loss really matter?
When they realized the Big Maple Leaf was missing police sprang into action.
They didn’t have a suspect, but they had PLENTY of evidence.
Most of the tools were left sitting where the thieves had left them along with their DNA.
CCTV cameras had captured them at the station.
They also discovered a trail of gold flakes leading them into the street which led police to another security camera which caught the getaway Mercedes driving away from the scene.
But identifying suspects would be no easy task.
Until… the police were contacted by informants and were told three names.
Ahmed, Wayci and Wissam Remmo.
As mentioned earlier the name was familiar to police and began to monitor communications.
Then they raided homes of key members of the organized crime organization believing the coin had been broken apart and sold piece-by-piece.
Around this time police were alerted to Denis’s involvement.
The patrol officer remembered the man who didn’t pay for gas and had museum floor plans in his car.
This led police to monitor Denis’ activities.
It wasn’t long before they saw the young security guard making some very extravagant purchases.
He invested thousands of dollars into a bakery, bought a luxury car and was walking around wearing a necklace worth €11,000.
I mean…come on man…
It was becoming clear that Denis was the man on the inside. On July 12, 2017, a raid was conducted on Ahmed and Wayci Remmo and their cousin Wissam Remmo and on Denis.
What police found was overwhelming.
Wissam Remmo’s phone was seized and police discovered he searched for gold prices, equipment for melting gold and news updates on the heist.
But wait there’s more!
The camera roll on his phone included screenshots of Google Map directions showing their getaway route.
In his apartment, they also found gloves with glass fragments.
Investigators also uncovered a rare Armani jacket in his possession clearly identifiable in security footage.
Ahmed Remmo’s fingerprints were found on a piece of paper listing gold prices.
The most damning evidence of all were the suspect’s clothes that had tiny gold fragments on them.
The same particles were found in more than one of the Remmo family’s cars.
It was like they were trying to get caught.
The thieves may have been terrible at covering their tracks, but the Remmo family has a lot of money.
They could use that to pay off witnesses and hire the best lawyers in Berlin.
In Germany, there are no juries.
Evidence is presented to a panel of judges who decide whether to convict or not.
The evidence against the four men had to air tight to get a conviction.
The trial began in January 2019 and lasted 41 days across the better part of a year.
Through it evidence was laid out, experts, and witnesses testified.
The ex-girlfriend of Ahmed Remmo was called and because she had previously shared that he had bragged about becoming a millionaire.
Unfortunately, as soon as she was on the stand, she recanted her statement.
Ernest Pernicka, an archeometrist became the key witness for the prosecution.
He linked the gold particles on the clothes of the men to the gold coin.
Court heard expert analysis of the size and stature of the men portrayed in CCTV footage which matched cousins Ahmed and Wissam Remmo, both high-school dropouts convicted multiple times for past petty crimes.
Through it all, the men were not in detention because they were on trial in a youth court.
If found guilty, they were facing up to 10 years in jail.
On Feb. 20, 2020, a verdict was handed down.
Denis was given three years and four months in prison and ordered to pay €100,000 in fines for being the inside man.
Wissam and Ahmed Remmo were both sentenced to four years and five months. They were fined €3.3 million, the value of the coin.
Wayci Remmo, the fourth defendant in the case and Ahmed’s brother, was acquitted of all charges.
The prosecution’s attempts to prove his involvement proved unconvincing.
Now that those found guilty were in jail…what happened to the coin?
Police never found the Big Maple Leaf More than likely it was broken down or melted so investigators don’t expect to ever find it.
As for Boris Fuschmann, the man who lent it to the museum, his insurance only paid him 20 percent of the coin’s value.
He launched a lawsuit stating the museum was negligent, and that caused his insurance company to increase the pay out to 50 per cent of the value.
However, the other coins minted in 2010 still exist, but they are no longer the largest in the world.
Just a year after the Royal Canadian Mint created The Big Maple, the Gold Kangaroo, a one-tonne gold coin was minted by Australia in 2011.
It measures 80 centimetres in diameter and 12 centimetres thick.
The Big Maple Leaf may be the second-largest coin ever minted but at least we have one heck of a crazy story to tell about it.
And I would like to thank a very special Canadian for encouraging me to share this episode.
Mr. Deadpool himself, Ryan Reynolds.
