A 47-year-old man is due to appear in court after being accused of stealing nearly $400,000 worth of limited-edition coins from the popular animated series Bluey.
The man was arrested on Wednesday, Aug. 7, and is accused of taking 63,000 unreleased limited edition $1 Bluey coins from the back of a truck at a warehouse in Fairfield City, Australia on June 23, the local police said in a release.
The stolen coins, produced by the Australian mint, are worth an estimated $600,000 AUD ($393,000) and were first reported stolen on July 12. They look like a one-dollar Australian coin and depict various images of Bluey characters from the popular Australian series.
The suspect was arrested at his home in Syndey and is believed to have been an employee at the warehouse at the time of the theft, according to police.
"On Monday, July 12, police received a report that a large amount of currency had been stolen from a warehouse in Wetherill Park," per the release. "... Strike Force detectives — with assistance from Raptor Squad — executed a search warrant at a home in Westmead, about 7:00 a.m. today (Aug. 7), where they arrested a 47-year-old man.”
Authorities also seized 189 unreleased limited edition Bluey coins at a residence in the Australian suburb of Sefton on July 31 and are on the lookout for other accomplices involved in the incident.
The suspect is charged with "three counts of break & enter" with the "intent to commit a serious indictable offense," according to the police release. The crime has a maximum penalty of 10 years.
Bluey debuted in Australia in 2018 and first aired in the U.S. in 2019. The widely popular animated series is also one of the most-streamed shows for Disney across all audiences in 2024.
Detective Superintendent Joseph Doueihi told reporters at a news conference, per NBC News: “The theft of these coins have deprived a lot of young children and members of the community from having access to these coins, so we’re doing our absolute best to try to recover these coins and put them back into circulation.”
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Detective Superintendent Joseph Doueihi from the Robbery and Serious Crime Squad said that the remaining stolen coins are currently being advertised online by an "innocent" coin collector where they are being sold for $10 AUD, ABC News Australia reported.
"Our investigation at that stage identified that person that was selling those coins was a legitimate coin collector and had innocently come into possession of those items," Doueihi said, per the outlet. "We don't know what he sold them for, but we know that as soon as they were stolen, they were offloaded almost immediately."