Turkish museum theft an inside job?

TURKISH police have detained nine people - including the director of a state museum - over the theft and replacement with fakes of two pieces from the fabled treasure of King Croesus.

The hugely valuable items - a coin as well as Croesus' golden brooch, in the shape of a winged sea-horse - had been switched with replicas at the Usak museum, in western Turkey, according to the tourism minister, Atilla Koc.

Full story here. The brooch had resided for a number of years in New York, before the Metropolitan Museum was pressured to return it along with a good number of other misappropriated objects from the same hoard.

Posted by David on May 30, 2006 10:12 PM