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Actor arrested after jewel thief TV role

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Actor arrested after jewel thief TV role
Photo: DPA

Police arrested an actor who played a jewel thief in a television reconstruction after a viewer mistakenly identified him as the real criminal.

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Aaron Defant must have played his part too convincingly. The 29-year-old actor was arrested by police in Stuttgart this week after being mistaken for the criminal he had played in an on-screen robbery reconstruction, Saturday's Bild newspaper reported on Saturday.

An unnamed viewer alerted police on Wednesday when they recognised Defant in Stuttgart city centre - more than five weeks after his appearance on an episode of the long-running ZDF crime-busting programme Aktenzeichen XY... ungelöst.

The March 11 programme had appealed to the public to find the thief behind the unsolved robbery of a jewellery store in Kirn in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

“Suddenly two officers were standing behind me,” Defant told the paper. “They demanded my ID. I asked them why, but they didn’t answer.“

But Defant remained calm and managed to convince the policemen they had got the wrong man. “I told them I’m an actor,” he said.

This is the first time such a mix-up has happened, the show's presenter Rudi Cerne told Bild.

“Maybe it’s because the actor looked very similar to the real criminal,” said Cerne.

DPA/The Local/jlb

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