January 21, 2014 – Many damaged coins are sold to companies located in low-cost countries in order to reclaim the raw materials. Apparently a Chinese company has specialized in sorting manually those coins and separating those, which could be reimbursed by the central bank of their origin.
And so this company sent two Chinese citizens to Denmark where the couple tried to exchange scrap coins for their face value. According to Danish law the Central Bank must reimburse damaged coins at their face value to anyone who presents them.
However, the large amount of coins – over $ 44,000 in face value – made the bank assistants suspicious. They called the police. The authorities arrested the Chinese couple by the end of August 2013 suspecting they were possessing counterfeit money. But after 48 days they were released after it was established that the coins were genuine.
You can read a detailed article on that subject here.