$25K reward offered in $1 million gold heist in N.J., report says

(CBS) OGDENSBURG, N.J. - Nearly $1 million worth of gold was stolen from a mineral museum in New Jersey in July 2011 and now a $25,000 reward is being offered in the case, CBS New York reports.

The daring heist took place at the Sterling Hill Mining Museum in Ogdensburg, N.J. between daytime tours, during a 20-minute window. Museum employees said the thief used an ax to smash the acrylic window, and then left the ax behind, the station reports.

"He just grabbed it, threw it in a bag and over a fence he went," Richard Hauck, the man who assembled the collection for the museum, said. According to Hauck, no surveillance cameras were operating at the time.

The thief managed to get away with crystallized gold and twenty gold nuggets that were not insured, according to the station.

Now, a $25,000 reward is being offered in the heist that occurred nearly two years ago. The directors of the non-profit museum decided to put the word out now because of four other museum burglaries around the county over the past two years, the station says.

But, according to Hauck, this gold is likely gone.

"Unless there's some nutty collector who's got it shoved under his bed someplace, but if anybody's doing it for the money, they melted it," he said.