Victim outwits Danish 'egg' thieves

The "egg" landed two Danish thieves in court (Photo: Danmarks Radio)

Two Danish thieves have been arrested trying to sell a designer chair back to the very man they stole it from.

The burglars made a crucial mistake when the victim turned detective and set out to track down his own chair, Danish radio reported.

The chair, called "Aegget" (The Egg), is a modern classic, selling for up to Kr51,000 ($7,740).

But it was the thieves who ended up with egg on their faces, as the chair's rightful owner sprang a trap to retrieve his seat.

Instead of feathering their own nest, the two criminals ended up in police custody.

Delayed viewing

The owner had advertised his chair for sale, and taken a phone call from a potential purchaser.

But he had to warn the man that no viewing would be possible until he returned from a trip.

By the time he got back, his house had been burgled and the chair was gone.

One chair to the worse, the man turned detective and placed a second advertisement - this time posing as a dealer looking to buy an "Aegget".

When he got a call offering him a chair, he immediately recognised the voice as the man who had rung him originally.

As the chair for sale was described, the rightful owner was sure that it was his "Aegget" that was being offered back to him.

Suspiciously cheap

Produced by top 20th century designer and architect Arne Jacobsen, this kind of chair is never a cut-price item.

So when the owner had bargained the thief down to a mere Kr12,000 ($1,820), he played his trump card.

"This sounds like stolen property," he said, "we'll have to agree on a completely different price."

The burglar took the bait.

"We can sort that out," he said.

When the owner visited the thief to clinch the deal, he was accompanied by two police officers.

The burglar and his accomplice were arrested, and the final piece of the jigsaw slotted into place. The owner's telephone number was found stored on the criminal's mobile phone, under the less than original code name of "Aegget".

Faced with all the evidence, the criminals had to admit they'd been counting their chickens before the "Aegget" had hatched, and made a clean breast of it to the police.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.