1675 violin stolen in 2005 found under drug dealer's bed

A violin from 1675 that was worth GBP 300,000 when it was stolen 15 years ago in Japan has been found under a drug dealer’s bed in Italy. The extremely rare and valuable Nicolo Amati violin was swiped from its owner in Japan in 2005, and police are now trying to work out how it ended up in the Italian city of Parma under the bed of a local drug dealer. The police confirm that they had found no drugs on this occasion when they raided the apartment of the known drug dealer, who was not named but was aged 48, in April 2019. But because the violin seemed to be very old and possibly valuable, they decided to investigate further starting with a business card for a dealer in musical instruments that was included inside the case of the violin. They confiscated the violin after the known drug dealer was unable to explain how we ended up with it, and also seized his phone. He later provided a story saying that his grandmother had purchased it from a pawn shop in Colombia and have been bought Italy by his sister-in-law. The suspect had been targeted in the raid because he had been previously arrested in 2018 for the possession of seven ounces of hashish and was under investigation for drug trafficking at the local prosecutor's office, prompting a fresh search of his home. The violin was not listed as stolen in any of the international police databases, but as it was clearly valuable, the Parma Public Prosecutor’s Office appointed an expert based in Cremona to conduct a full review.