By Axel Lier and Alina Gröning
The police in Brandenburg are looking for a thief worth millions (26). The employee of a money and valuables transport company stole cash from the Potsdam branch and has been on the run ever since. An accomplice (33) was caught in Berlin on Thursday.
It was a million-dollar coup! She opened the safe with a master key, bagged tons of bundles of cash and disappeared – to this day there is no trace of the thief from Potsdam. Carla Mostertz, spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office on the BZ: “I can confirm the theft, the suspect has not yet been arrested.”
According to BZ information, the brazen act occurred on Saturday, September 2nd, in the premises of Prosegur, a cash and valuables transport company (4,000 employees nationwide, 31 branches). The theft remained undetected on Sunday – valuable time passed. Employees only informed the police on Monday.
The investigating authorities remain silent about the exact course of the crime. Video footage from several surveillance cameras shows that the 26-year-old stuffed the cash into trash bags she had brought with her during her shift. She then finished her duties and disappeared – with the bags. There is talk in security circles of a loot amounting to six million euros!
The door on Bramwaldweg in Spandau was broken down and the accomplice was arrested Photo: Fabian Matzerath
Prosecutor Mostertz: “We do not want to provide any information at this time about the exact amount, the course of the crime and the further police measures.”
As BZ learned, investigators are said to have recognized an accomplice’s vehicle on the video recordings – the trail led to Berlin. On Thursday around 3 a.m., access on Bramwaldweg in Spandau. Volkan O. (33, German-Turkish) is arrested by elite police officers. It is still unclear whether parts of the loot were found on him. O. is in custody.
Neighbors at his home address do not want to comment on him. His bell on the third floor is turned off and there are children’s shoes in front of the door. The apartment door itself is demolished – a sign of the police’s violent entry. “Whether other people were involved in the crime is the subject of ongoing investigations,” prosecutor Carla Mostertz continued.
How can something like this happen in a closely monitored cash-in-transit company? Julian Siebert, spokesman for Prosegur, says that they are “working closely with the responsible authorities.” But he cannot provide any further information. Siebert: “To protect the integrity of the process and ensure that the investigation is conducted effectively, we cannot provide specific details at this time.”
The theft in Potsdam is strongly reminiscent of a case from Bremen: on May 21, 2021, Yasemin Gündogan (28) stole eight million euros from the money transport company Loomis, where she was employed until recently. Gündogan was responsible for packing banknotes into cash boxes, which are then later taken to cash machines in bank branches in a security transporter and used.
Instead of filling the banknotes into the cassettes as usual, she packed the money in security bags and threw them into a roll container intended for waste. She rolled the container outside and packed the bags into a vehicle. The crime only came to light four days after the crime. Since the coup, the German-Turkish woman has disappeared from the face of the earth and the search is ongoing worldwide.
Exciting: Gündogan’s getaway car, a black Mercedes-Benz, model Vito, was rented on May 19th in Spandau – the same district in which Volkan Ö. lives and was arrested.