An alleged coin bandit has been charged by Australian police with stealing more than A$600,000 ($393,500; £309,000) worth of limited-edition coins based on the hit children’s television show Bluey.
Police say they received a report last month that 64,000 unreleased $1 Bluey coins had been stolen from a warehouse in Western Sydney, where the man allegedly worked.
Police say that the coins – which had been due to enter general circulation next month – are selling for 10 times their face value.
On Wednesday, 47-year-old Steven John Neilson was arrested after a raid on a Sydney home. He has been charged with three counts of breaking and entering.
He was denied bail when he appeared in Parramatta Court on Wednesday.
Police allege the coins were sold online, hours after they were stolen from the back of a truck at the warehouse where the accused worked.
They were due to be transported to a storage facility in Brisbane at the time of the alleged theft, police said.
It took several days until it was realised that the pallet of coins, weighing around 500 kg (1102 lbs), was missing.
Police say that that while they have recovered around 1,000 coins, they believe the rest are in general circulation.
The Royal Australian Mint declined to comment when contacted by the BBC saying it was “inappropriate” due to the investigation.
The New South Wales Police investigation was codenamed Strike Force Bandit, after Bandit who is Bluey’s father in the show.
The coins were marked Dollarbucks – a reference the way that money is often referred to in the cartoon.
The hit show, about the Heeler family of dogs, is made by Brisbane-based animation firm Ludo with BBC Studios and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Bluey has been a huge international success and is now broadcast in more than 60 countries including the UK, the US and China.
It was streamed for more than 20 billion minutes on Disney+ in the US last year, putting it in the country’s top 10 streaming programmes for minutes viewed.
There are more than 150 episodes of Bluey across three seasons.
The stolen coins are different from a collectable set of Bluey currency that caused a frenzy when it went on sale by the Royal Australian Mint in June this year.
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