The recipe for the perfect crime involves at least 200 bars of butter and nearly 150 blocks of cheese.
At least, that’s according to two men that German police arrested on Thursday for stealing a ‘considerable amount of food’.
The alleged shoplifters were pulled over while driving along Kölner Landstraße, a road that runs through the Wersten district of Düsseldorf.
Inside the boot and stacked high on the back seats of the Mercedes car, patrol officers found 200 packs of butter, 146 pieces of Parmesan cheese, several bags of Ariel washing liquid pods and salmon.
The men, both aged 50, also had bolt cutters, a machete and two knives in the vehicle.
‘The duo could not provide any plausible explanations for the items found,’ the police said.
Police first grew suspicious of the men, a German and Romanian national, when they noticed their car was registered in Cologne.
The officers stopped the vehicle as part of a ‘strategic search’ that, police said, allowed them to temporarily arrest the suspected food thieves.
Neither man could show police a receipt for the haul of dairy goods.
Investigators discovered the food was taken from a local discount grocer, which police gave back
The suspects were already known to the police for similar thefts, the force added.
They have since been released ‘due to a lack of grounds for detention’.
While sacks of bank notes or expensive phones might be the usual MO of thieves, stealing butter does make a lick of sense in Germany.
The average price tag of a stick of butter in Germany has increased by nearly 66% in the last four years, much like other household groceries.
Between 2023 and 2024, butter prices saw a head-spinning rise of 40%. A 250g block of butter can now set shoppers back up to €4 (about £3.33).
Dairy manufacturers in Germany say the price hikes are down to a global shortage of milk fuelled by the Russia-Ukraine war.
Fewer shoppers in Germany are also popping butter in their baskets, dairy farmers say, but demand for cheese remains high.
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