German Thieves Steal 300,000 Litres of Beer

First the German criminals targeted the sausages, now they’ve gone for the beer: just 24 hours after Breitbart London reported that federal authorities had uncovered a multi-billion euro price-fixing cartel among some of the country’s best known manufacturers of Germany’s 1,500 varieties of “Wurst,” police in the Rhineland city of Krefeld disclosed they had discovered that over the weekend thieves got away with 300,000 litres of beer, equivalent to around 80,000 U.S. gallons, or ten truckloads.

Puzzled police were left issuing a news release asking: “Has anyone noticed a large amount of beer?”

However, since Germany won the World Cup in Brazil at the weekend, the answer to that could only be: “Yes, everywhere.”

Police said that sometime between 5pm on Thursday and 12pm on Monday, thieves broke into a beer warehouse. They loaded large trucks with palettes of beer, apparently returning on several occasions in short intervals.

According to the Wall Street Journal “by German consumption standards, to be sure, 10 truckloads of beer is little more than a drop in the barrel. According to statistics from the German Brewers’ Federation, it would take Germans drinking at their 2013 pace approximately 18 minutes and 22 seconds to consume 300,000 litres of beer.”

The vehicles were spotted driving down the Autobahn 40 in the direction of Duisburg, where police suspect the cargo was unloaded, The Local reported.

With beer in bars and restaurants costing around €3.50 (£2.75) for half a litre, the haul would be worth €2.1m (£1.66m) at bar prices.