An alleged coin bandit has been charged by Australian police with stealing more than A$600,000 ($393,500; \u00a3309,000) worth of limited-edition coins based on the hit children\u2019s television show Bluey.<\/b><\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Police say that the coins – which had been due to enter general circulation next month – are selling for 10 times their face value.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
He was denied bail when he appeared in Parramatta Court on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
They were due to be transported to a storage facility in Brisbane at the time of the alleged theft, police said.<\/p>\n
It took several days until it was realised that the pallet of coins, weighing around 500 kg (1102 lbs), was missing.<\/p>\n
Police say that that while they have recovered around 1,000 coins, they believe the rest are in general circulation.<\/p>\n
The Royal Australian Mint declined to comment when contacted by the BBC saying it was \u201cinappropriate\u201d due to the investigation.<\/p>\n
The New South Wales Police investigation was codenamed Strike Force Bandit, after Bandit who is Bluey’s father in the show.<\/p>\n
The coins were marked Dollarbucks \u2013 a reference the way that money is often referred to in the cartoon.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Bluey has been a huge international success and is now broadcast in more than 60 countries including the UK, the US and China.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
There are more than 150 episodes of Bluey across three seasons.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"