Police recover more than 40,000 stolen Bluey coins

Police in Australia say they’ve recovered round 40,000 limited-edition cash primarily based on the hit kids’s tv present Bluey.

It was reported in July that 63,000 of the cash – produced by the Australian Mint – had been stolen from a warehouse in Western Sydney, about two months earlier than they had been because of enter circulation.

Authorities recovered 40,061 cash on Tuesday after a raid on a property about 10km (6 miles) from the storage facility.

Earlier that day, 27-year-old Christina Vale had been arrested and charged with breaking and getting into and disposing of stolen property, police say. She was the third individual arrested over the alleged theft.

The cash, that are price A$1 ($0.65; 50p) a bit, had been stolen two months earlier than their deliberate launch. New South Wales Police stated they’d previously been selling online for 10 times their face value.

Shortly after the theft was reported, Police within the state of New South Wales launched a particular investigation into the incident codenamed Strike Power Bandit – after Bluey’s father.

In August, they arrested 44-year-old Steven Nielsen, who was an worker on the warehouse, and Nassar Kanj, additionally 44, who they are saying acted as his confederate within the alleged heist.

Police will now argue in court docket that Christina Vale was the pair’s getaway driver.

The gold-coloured cash are referred to as Bluey dollarbucks – which is how cash is referred to within the cartoon – and have photos of characters from the present.

The hit collection, in regards to the Heeler household of canines, is made by Brisbane-based animation agency Ludo with BBC Studios and the Australian Broadcasting Company.

Bluey has been an enormous worldwide success and is now broadcast in additional than 60 nations together with the UK, US and China.

It was streamed for greater than 20 billion minutes on Disney+ within the US final yr, placing it within the nation’s high 10 streaming programmes for minutes considered.

There are greater than 150 episodes of Bluey throughout three seasons, and a Bluey-themed “interactive expertise” is opening in Brisbane subsequent month.

The stolen cash are totally different from a collectable set of Bluey foreign money that precipitated a frenzy when it went on sale by the Royal Australian Mint in June this yr.