Junk dealer finds missing Oscars

All but two of the missing Oscars have been discovered by a scrap merchant in Los Angeles.

Willie Fullgear found the Academy Award statuettes while searching rubbish skips in the city's Koreatown neighbourhood. He said they were still wrapped in plastic inside individual white boxes.

Fullgear loaded the Oscars - weighing almost 200kg in total - into the boot of his car and than rang the police.

"I've got more Oscars than any of the movie stars," the junk dealer joked in an interview with CBS News.

The 55 gold-plated statuettes disappeared earlier this month from a Roadway Express depot in a suburb of Los Angeles. Police arrested two employees of the trucking company the day before the Oscars were discovered. The men face theft charges and are being held on bail of $200,000.

The recovered Oscars will not be presented at the Academy Awards next week because the police need them as evidence. Instead, the Motion Picture Academy will bestow the replacement Oscars which it ordered last week.