September 14, 2023 • 35 mins
The heist in Dubai is just the latest in a string of elaborate smash-and-grab robberies of high-end jewelry stores across the globe. In glamorous locations like Monaco, Paris, London and Tokyo, the Pink Panthers’ flashy, cinematic style involves wigs and costumes, speedboats and motorcycles, blowtorches and grenades. But when the loot is worth millions — and instantly recognizable — selling what you’ve stolen is a crucial skill all its own.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Zavikonnen.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I am former police officer, was working in Paris and
was in charge the highest robberies of jewelries in Paris.
So I've been in the police during twenty five year.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Captain ervekon Nan was the lead investigator on multiple robberies
by the Pink Panthers in Paris starting in the early
two thousands. He saw firsthand how a group of Serbian
jewel thieves turned themselves into a global brand.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
The name of Pink Panthers was given after the robbery
in London after the graft.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Robberies back in two thousand and three, two men in
expensive suits entered a Graph jewelry store on New Bond
Street in London's West End. One of them was wearing
a conspicuous black wig that a security guard later said
looked like a cat. It was the middle of the
day and this luxury shopping district was full of people. Suddenly,
(01:00):
one of the men pulled out a gun, the other
a hammer. Three minutes later, the pair walked out into
the busy London streets with over thirty million dollars worth
of diamonds. Graphs sell some of the world's most exclusive,
(01:20):
expensive jewelry and high end watches. This was the first
time the Pink Panthers had targeted them, but the Panthers
would develop a taste for what Graph offers and would
return to them when they struck the Waffy Mall in Dubai. Now,
most of the jewels from this first Graph heist were
never recovered, but at least one was.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
The name of Pink Panthers was given by the newspapers
in England because our colleagues in London they found diamonds
in a pot of cream.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Cream.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
It was a jar of face scream and inside police
found a blue diamond worth seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
The thieves had left it behind when they made their
escape from London.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Okay, the fun of diamonds and it was a reference
to a movie, Pink Panther, and so the name was
given to this gang.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
At this time.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
It was something right out of the classic Peter Sellers
movie Return of the Pink Panther. The name given by
the British press stock media across Europe just loved it.
But this was not the first time the newly branded
Pink Panthers had struck. In fact, the Pink Panthers was
(02:38):
simply a new label for a vast underworld network that
was already running like a well oiled machine, and vlad
and Lazarevich, b Yana Mitch and Milan Lipoya were just
three of its latest recruits. I'm Natalia Antalava. I'm a
(03:03):
journalist based in Eastern Europe, and I'm going to take
you into the world of Serbia's most brazen jewel thieves.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
The most daring and successful diamond thieves in the world.
Speaker 5 (03:17):
Thirty to forty seconds in.
Speaker 6 (03:20):
Out They've stolen half a billion dollars worth of valuables.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Two well dressed men strolled into an exclusive jewelry store
in London and walked out with sixty six million dollars
in jewels. They called the Pink pantherst They're a loosely
connected group of over educated, underemployed, ambitious young people who
rose from the ashes of the Yugoslav Wars of the
(03:45):
nineteen nineties to commit elaborate smash and grab heists all
across the globe, often in broad daylight. This is infamous
international The Pink Panthers Story Episode two, Thick as Thieves.
(04:11):
Last time we heard how three young Serbian thieves had
traveled to Dubai from Eastern Europe in two thousand and seven.
The mastermind Mladen Lazarevich, the team's logistics lead, and Laden's
girlfriend Boyana Mitch and their friend Milan Li Poya. The
team had spent weeks in preparation for a robbery that
(04:32):
would make them all rich and famous. They drove two
Audi Sedans through the doors of the Waffy Mall and
straight into the Graph Jewelry store, making off with over
three million dollars worth of jewels, all in under a minute.
The heist was caught on cell phone video and posted
(04:52):
online within days. The Ping Panthers were a worldwide sensation,
but Conan of the Paris Police was well acquainted with
the Panthers long before Dubai, even before the British papers
gave them a name. In two thousand and one, they
had pulled off an ingenious robbery at one of the
(05:13):
most high jewelers in Paris called Boucheron.
Speaker 7 (05:16):
They have attacked Beauchamp, the jewelry on the place b
Loom and they attack the main windows.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
In fact, it was in the morning, very early.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
The shop was still closed.
Speaker 7 (05:26):
Okay, but the jewelries were still visible from outside.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Millions of dollars of jewels sitting on display right behind
the front window of a closed shop. It seems like
it's inviting trouble. But the store had a very special
security system.
Speaker 7 (05:40):
It is a specific glasses, very sophisticated. It resists when
you eat the window with the ammer or axis. But
if the departure is very high the glass, you can
break it. So they burn, in fact, the windows with
I don't know if the name in English, with a
big flame.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
It was a blowtorch. The thieves knew what they were
up against, and they had planned accordingly. They hid the
glass until it's brutal, neutralizing the security feature.
Speaker 7 (06:09):
So they break the window like this, and they have
took an egglace in the jewry. It was maybe three millions.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
It's very very smart.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
It was like in a movie.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
It was just like a movie. It's almost like that
was their intention.
Speaker 8 (06:28):
I always thought that the most important part of their
exploits was this part of them being media said, you
hear these guys out there interested in their image, you know,
interested in the way how public perceives them.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
The misvoint of is a Serbian film scholar who wrote
a film about the Being Panthers. For him, the Panthers'
style was clearly inspired by popular movies and television.
Speaker 8 (06:54):
In a very same way John Dillinger appeared after a
very long stint in prison, you went to cinema in
order to learn to speak again. So he used to
mimic dialogue for films. And I think that Pink Panthers
are a lot like Dillager. You know, their actions resemble
a lot of films using masks or some kind of
disguise that's from Mission Impossible.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
You know.
Speaker 8 (07:15):
It's a very curious thing, you know about how media
and movies informed.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
This, and journalists have made that connection as well.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
We've seem so many fun heist films.
Speaker 9 (07:26):
We love a complicated crime that is well executed, and
apparently they do too. My name is Eric Pape. I'm
a longtime investigative reporter. I've worked extensively for Newsweek magazine,
The Daily Beast that I've written for Vid Debray publications
around the world.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Eric Pape was based in Paris, where he first started
covering the Panthers in the late two thousands.
Speaker 9 (07:50):
I started writing about the Pink Panthers almost fifteen years ago.
They very much capture something in the popular imagination.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Pay reported on a number of the Pink Panthers heists
and some of the details struck him as especially creative.
Speaker 9 (08:05):
Police this may be one of my favorites talked about
the four busty ladies who entered the Henry Winston jewelry
shop in Paris, threw out a magnum and a grenade,
and then they escaped with about one hundred million dollars
in jewelry. Police said that they believed it was Pink
Panthers in drag.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
For the Panthers, plenty of heist is similar to making
a movie. Everyone has their part, their costume, They spend
weeks rehearsing, and on the day of the robbery it's
time to perform. Eric Paper calls another Panther heist where
distracting woodrobe choices play the key role.
Speaker 9 (08:42):
I believe it was in two thousand and five and
it was in Centrope on the Mediterranean coast.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
You would think they might want to dress in the
most mundane.
Speaker 9 (08:52):
Clothes imaginable to blend in, but instead they dressed in
these loud, very tacky tourist T shirts and they went
into a store right near the waterfront.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
Streets were thronged with tourists. That's something that they often do.
They often use.
Speaker 9 (09:06):
Masses of people or traffic as a cover because a
you can try to blend in afterwards, you can change
out of that flashy T shirt, for example, but also
the traffic and all the people make it hard for
police to respond. So they basically walked through the tourist
bron streets that were impassable to cars, and they got
in a waiting speedboat.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
A speedboat like something out of James Bond or maybe
the Italian Job.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
It's brazen and very well thought through.
Speaker 9 (09:34):
At the same time, if they just went in looking
like a couple of normal people like me and they left,
then would we be talking about them?
Speaker 3 (09:40):
These early highs show how big patners develop a signature style,
the one that reflects a deliberate use of drama and misdirection.
Speaker 9 (09:48):
They have made a tactical decision to draw attention to themselves.
It's kind of an interesting thing if you think about it.
The idea of having flashy when you want attention and
switching to to nondescript when you need to Everything is
thought through quite brilliantly.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
It's almost like a magician.
Speaker 9 (10:10):
The magician wants you looking somewhere, and they don't want
you looking somewhere else. And they have given so much
thought to what it's going to grab your attention and
what is going to not And in this case, the
you is all of the different witnesses.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
Who are likely going to end up speaking to authorities.
Speaker 9 (10:25):
So to me, it just gets at something really well crafted.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Crazy costumes, expensive cars, speedboats, all of it designed to
distract onlookers from the actual crime.
Speaker 5 (10:38):
They want the wow factor.
Speaker 9 (10:40):
And so I think strangely, by being extremely visible, by
dressing up these big, strong men, dressing up as women,
by doing all of these things that we associate with
being Panther films, with James Bond films, with countless heist films,
I think it actually makes it very very hard to
catch them, because it's not just someone walking in with
(11:00):
a gun saying this is a robbery and then running
away or jumping in a car. It's something so much
less probable than that that authorities would have a very
hard time predicting every one of these wild and crazy
crimes that they seemed to have committed.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Captain Irve Konnan of the Paris Police says, these early
years we're a kind of golden age for the Panthers.
Speaker 7 (11:24):
Between two thousand and two thousand and seven, they had
a fantastic opportunity to rub everywhere in the world because
you were able to travel.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
With false passport or for spassport.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
It was easy.
Speaker 7 (11:36):
You had no DNA, the TV was very bad and
sometimes did not exist, and Montenegro and Serbia there were
a lot of corruption in these countries, so they know
that as soon as they were in that country they
were not in danger. So there are ten years it
was open bar.
Speaker 5 (11:54):
They were able to do everything they want in the world.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
An open bar everywhere in the world. And though there
was no way to predict where the Pink Panthers would
strike next, their targets all shared a specific profile. Anywhere
the rich and famous gathered and shocked. They hit London,
Paris and Liechtenstein, Monaco and ski resorts in the French Alps.
(12:18):
And as their ambitions grew, so did the distance the
Panthers were willing to travel.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
One was the guy we arrested.
Speaker 7 (12:25):
We had wire tape on him and we understood that
he traveled in Japan, and after that we found picture
where he's in Japan with his girlfriend, so he was
going there to check if he was able to make
a robbery.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
They were traveling everywhere in the world, and two major robberies.
Speaker 7 (12:41):
Were committed in Tokyo by them, two major robberies.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
So the pig Panther thing is kind of legendary in
Japan because it was one of the first international jewel
heights ever in the country.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Jake Adelstein is an investigative journalist who has been covering
crime and for thirty years. He literally wrote the book
on it. His memoir Tokyo Vice became a major TV
series he remembers one of these panther heists.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
So, first of all, the crime took place in Kinza,
which is one of the most expensive places in Tokyo.
Even now, it's loaded with these high end shops like
Uivatan shops and Channel shops and Bulgary and these luxury
brands that are high end and the Japanese people of
certain wealth really love, and so it's also a place
where a very expensive high end jewelry.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
It's May two thousand and seven, just two months after
the heist at the Wafimont. Two panthers arrived at Tokyo's
Narita Airport with their sites on a particularly valuable piece
of jewelry, a diamond encrusted tiara. They've given themselves two
months to put a plan in place. They study the
(13:51):
area carefully and decide to approach the story they've targeted
on bicycles Towards the end of the workday. The streets
will be crowded and they'll easily blend in.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
It's five pm on June fourteenth. First came this guy
in wearing a suit, and then came another guy in
a white mask almost immediately after him. He shot the
tear gas in the faces of the clerks. They stole
this tierra and a necklace and other things worth about
the tier itself was worth like two million dollars, and
then they sold a necklace and other things were probably
worth maybe close to a million dollars. And they did
(14:24):
it all in about thirty two seconds. Thirty two seconds
they entered, they broke into it, they stole the stuff,
they were out of there within thirty two seconds, which
is kind of amazing.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
This kind of thing never happens in Japan. The Tokyo
police are totally taken aback.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
So the Japanese police were kind of baffled by this
crime because they came in fast and they left very fast,
and this was the time before Japan was covered in
closed circuit TV, so there wasn't great footage of these guys.
They didn't leave any fingerprints behind, even though they were
not wearing gloves, which really surprised anybody, and all they
did was take the merchandise they are aiming for.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
But since the Waffi mol heist in Dubai, the Panther
brand of robbery had become all too familiar for law enforcement,
and the Tokyo police immediately have their suspicions.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
From the very beginning, they suspected that these might be
members of the Pink Panther.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
They also have one small bit of evidence. The thieves
dumbed the empty can of tear gas not far from
the jewelry store.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
So they decided to go with the can of tear
gas and see what they could find. But they found
out that the spray was a mass market animal repellant,
which used in France to scare of wild dogs and
other animals.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
This one clue is enough to convince them that the
crime is international in nature and that is enough to
bring an INTERPOL.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
The Japanese police are incredibly good at cooperating with Interpol
and working with them even with the language barrier, and
making sure that the crime is perpetrated on Jepanesy soil,
and they want to capture the person. They're dedicated and
they spend lots of manpower in hours and they will
send people overseas to help gather the information to put
together the case.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
With the help of INTERPAL, Japanese authorities are able to
track the serial number and they can to a military
surplus store in Marseille in the south of France. Meanwhile,
Tokyo police are able to piece together the timeline of
the heist.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
So what the police were able to put together is
that they came in at five pm thirty two seconds.
They had stolen everything that they needed. They hopped on
bicycles about four hundred meters away. They threw away the
tear gas, They dropped the bicycle, They got in a car.
They took apart the tierra. They took off all the
diamonds what they couldn't use from the tier. They flushed
(16:40):
on the toilet. Then they headed in the Reda airport
and left. There is a possibility that they met with
the mistress of an Italian jewelry dealer before they left
and made a transaction there, But that's what police were
able to put together.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
The Japanese authorities, together with Interpol, embark on an international
manhunt using global intelligence gathering and surveillance, and their diligence
pays off. One suspect is caught in two thousand and
nine in Cyprus, the other in twenty ten in Rome.
The jewels themselves were never recovered, but the details of
(17:24):
how these Pink Panthers dismantled the highly recognizable tiara into
loose stones points to another hallmark of the Pink Panther brand.
Not only do they know how to steal a two
million dollar piece of jewelry, they know how to sell it.
Speaker 10 (17:54):
Now, let's talk about what you do if you've come
into possession of a large amount of stolen high end jewelry.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Scott Selby is the author of Flawless Inside, the largest
diamond heist in History. He's a leading expert on the
black market diamond trade.
Speaker 10 (18:12):
The Panthers they like to hit high end shops high
end jewelry. These are things that are already polished, that
are already ready to be sold. They've been cut in
such a way to really have the highest value, to
look the most beautiful. There's a lot of things that
then come into play with how you fence those, depending
upon exactly what you stole and what kind of value
(18:32):
you're expecting to get back from it.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
The panthers intentionally target the most expensive jewelry from the
most famous stores, but these are not the easiest items
to turn into quick cash.
Speaker 10 (18:44):
Generally, they've stolen from high end, name brand jewelry stores,
and so with those you're going to be facing some
decisions pretty quickly, right because having a brand name associated
with a jewelry as well as the intricate design of
that jewelry gives it a high percent of the value.
Here's the problem is, if it's something recognizable, if it's
(19:06):
something that costs fifty million dollars, from some famous jeweler,
everybody in the business will know what it is and
anybody else would just google it, right, So then what
you would probably do is you would unfortunately have to
lose the craftsmanship of the jewelry as well as the
value of the brand by removing the individual stones from
(19:27):
it and melting down the gold. If you sell something
to a fence, particularly things that are harder to sell
on the rule of thumb that's been used for a
long time is ten cents on the dollar.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Right.
Speaker 10 (19:38):
So now imagine that Tiffany's diamond. You've now removed the
polished diamond from the engagement ring and you've melted the
ring down for its silver value, which is tremendously less
than you know it being a finished product.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
But let's be honest, when what you've stolen is worth
tens of millions of dollars, you can probably afford some markdowns.
And what about really big.
Speaker 10 (19:59):
Stone, It's going to depend. Like let's say you have
a big necklace with the pink panther. Sometimes they've stolen
something where there's a primary stone that's large, famous enough
maybe even to be named. It's going to be something
really special that anybody in the world in the business
would recognize it.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Something for example, like the one hundred and twenty five
carrot diamond necklace known as a contest de vendome. The
panther stole that in two thousand and four. It was
worth an estimated thirty one point five million dollars.
Speaker 10 (20:32):
So that one, let's put on the side. It's really
hard to move, but there's going to be a lot
of accompanying stones with it, and a lot of these
will be relatively generic, so it should be pretty easy
to move. They're probably going to be flawless. One carrot
maybe two carrot white diamonds. The first thing you're going
to want to do is look on it's called the girdle,
(20:52):
and what that basically is is if you have your
gemstone line flat, so you have a profile view. It's
going to be the widest part. It's a part that
divides the top and the bottom of the diamond, and
it's become common over the years for there to be
a laser inscription there. Then what you have to do
is you have to see if there's the equivalent of
a serial number or certification number or something.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
There a certification that could identify the jam and tell
you exactly where it came from.
Speaker 10 (21:19):
So that's the first thing they're going to look for,
is are their numbers on the side, And if there are,
that's a problem because anybody anywhere along the process could
look it up right. You could very easily polish those off,
but you need somebody that's in the business that polishes diamonds.
So that's something where you're going to need a corrupt
individual to work with.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Finding a corrupt individual in this shadowy world's called Selby's
talking about doesn't sound difficult. I mean, this is where
the Pink Panthers live. On CNN, Anderson Cooper talk to
filmmaker Havana Marking, who made a documentary about the Panthers,
about the group's extensive support network.
Speaker 11 (21:56):
Diamonds are the key thing that they are professional at
and do the best at, mainly because they've got incredible
connections to diamond centers like Antwerp, a huge European center
of diamond trading. I was lucky enough to make a
contact of the Panthers called mister Green, who is a
fence and he's the person who they take the diamonds too.
(22:20):
He gets them recut, he creates completely new sort of
certificates of origin for them, and is able to he
has the connections to then sell them back into the
clean market.
Speaker 10 (22:35):
So once he gets something into the legitimate stream of commerce,
you've got it made. Because one diamond could change hands
eight times in a week in Antwerp, Belgium.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Scott Selby again.
Speaker 10 (22:45):
But the problem is is people there will remember certain
kinds of stones. These are people who really care about
what they're doing, and there's an artistic element to it.
These are communities where people know each other and have
heard of things. So you can't just introduce basically the
big pendance stone from some necklace you stole in Japan.
You can't just introduce that on the other side of
(23:06):
the world and nobody has any questions, right.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Right, These rare stones might be the most valuable, but
they're also the hardest to fence without bringing a lot
of unwanted attention. Still, when you have the right connections,
you have options.
Speaker 10 (23:20):
One choice is is you can sell it on so
the buyer knows it's stolen and they're comfortable with that.
And traditionally there's a market for very high end stones
in Hong Kong and Dubai where people might not ask
so many questions, right, So you could have people who
are willing to buy something like that. So that's one option.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Okay, but what if we're dealing with a stone that
is a little too famous.
Speaker 10 (23:44):
Something that's sort of unfortunate but sometimes needs to be done.
Is if you have something truly unusual, you may find
yourself forced to cut it into smaller pieces. If you
show up with a thousand of these stones, the first
person to buy its going to know that it's stolen,
and there'll be a big discount involved, right, But the
(24:05):
person they sell it on to you will have no idea,
and the person after them and the person after them,
and these stones move fast, fast, fast, and Antwerp. They
all go through Antwerpt, Belgium for the most part, and
the next thing you know, it'll be in your local
strip model and then an engagement ring and you yourself
could be worreing an engagement ring with a stone that
was stroller and nobody would know.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Given how complicated it is to move stolen diamonds and
the criminal network required to do it, you have to
wonder about the economics. Is stealing diamonds actually a good business.
My colleague Elon Greenberg spoke to Don Palmery, a master genmologist,
appraiser a gem certification and assurance lab in New York.
Speaker 6 (24:50):
We are greaters and certifiers of diamonds and gemstones, and
we do a great deal of work for the law
enforcement and insurance industries. I've been involved in so many
of these cases afterwards, when they begin to recover some
of the jewelry and especially things like big diamonds that
have been recut and then try to remarket through the
(25:12):
legitimate marketplace. Sadly, there's always a market for hot diamonds
and jewels of great value, and very sadly it's tied
right back to our industry. So you have to understand
that these are stones that travel around the entire globe.
They go from one major auction to another. They go
(25:34):
from the hands of wealthy people in Asia, Europe, the
United States, South America.
Speaker 12 (25:40):
Once this compromiser degraded, right, how do they recoup that
original value? How do you inflate it? I understand how
you decrease it, but how do you increase.
Speaker 6 (25:50):
It again by getting a legitimate grading report on the
previously stolen stone. And the way to do that is
to in some way disguise it. Real way to disguise
it would be either to damage it where you're creating
flaws in the stone, or you recut it. But if
you recut it enough, you can remove other tailtale identifying marks,
(26:14):
then the laboratory just grades it. They're grading tens of
millions of diamonds every year, and I think some things
have slipped through the cracks.
Speaker 12 (26:23):
So when someone pulls off a heist right and steals
millions of dollars worth of let's say, diamonds or other gemstones,
it seems like then they fence it for pennies on
the dollar. Why don't they knock off a liquor store
like it seems like for all that effort and all that,
you know, it looks glamorous, but they're getting pennies. You
know why at an atm you know, it doesn't seem
(26:45):
like the margin is there.
Speaker 6 (26:47):
Oh it is. Explain how first of all, the average
bank robbery they only get what a few thousand dollars anymore, three,
four or five thousand dollars. But if you gee, I
don't want to encourage your audience to think about this
as the next great thing to do. But we're talking
about small items with one of the greatest stores of
(27:09):
inherent value. So if you've got a ten kara d
flawless diamond, you know, basically you're talking about a million
dollar stone. Let's say you only get two hundred thousand
dollars for it. What liquor store do you know has
two hundred thousand dollars? Think about any other thing of
great value. A bar of gold, I mean a bar
of gold. Let's say it's ten ounces. You know today's money.
(27:33):
What's it worth sixteen thousand dollars? And try running down
the street with a ten ounce bar gold in your pocket?
But with gems, it's a whole lot easier. It's very compact,
great storehouse of value.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Diamonds were always a high priority target for the Panthers,
but they also had a soft spot for high end watches.
Thorpe is a retired watch dealer with forty years of
experience in the business.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
And now I'm spending my time as a full time
YouTuber and enjoying every minute of it. Mainly focused on
anti watch crime.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Paul fell under the spell of watches early.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
My dad was a big watch guy. I remember falling
in love with a TIMEX on another boy's risk at
school when I was five years old, and that was it.
I was bitten by the bug. I caught watch disease.
I've taken every known medication a man to cure it,
but it's never worked.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Paul's love of watches gives him an insider's understanding of
their appeal to thieves.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
I think the big thing is with what is and
you've also mentioned diamonds. There is the fact that they
are easily transportable, They are obviously valuable, and therefore a
great desirable asset for the criminals because you can't get
on a plane with a million dollars in cash someone
who's going to stop and ask you questions. But you
can fit a million dollars with a diamonds in your pocket,
(29:01):
or a million dollar watch, and no one is going
to buy an eyelid. They retain a huge part of
their original value even when it's.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Stolen, and that value has only grown over time.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
The black market pre two thousand, I mean back then,
the value of our Rolex watch on the black market
would have been about a third of its retail value,
so still a decent return if you've got enough of them. Today,
by comparison, that same watch on the black market is
worth between eighty and one hundred percent of its retail value,
(29:34):
and in some cases two hundred percent of its retail value,
despite the fact that it's stolen. Particularly since around about
I would say twenty seventeen, the luxury watch market has
exploded right across the world and certainly in London now.
I mean, if you throw a stone in the are,
it's probably going to land and fall on a luxury watch.
They're easy to transport and that's why I believe the
(29:55):
watch black market has in many instances taken over from drugs.
And I'm told that the value of luxury watches has
risen a lot faster than the value of illegal drugs
on the street. So a lot of these gangs have
been taking their money out of drugs and putting it
into luxury watches.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
From drugs to watches. Is it really such a better business.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
That it's risk versus reward for these criminals. If they're
caught with a kilo of Class A drugs, they're going
to go out to prison. In the UK, you're looking
at say between ten and twelve years. If you steal
a luxury watch, you're probably going to be out in
eighteen months. And if you look at the risk versus
the reward, if you steal three Richard Mills and a
(30:39):
dozen rolics in a twelve month period, that's going to
met you somewhere in a reason of one point five
million pounds in cash, or wherever you take payment.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
With those kind of returns, it's no wonder that watches
grew in popularity with the criminal class, and like other
jewelry stores, watch dealers have had to adapt.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Two thousand and ten, we were pretty regular, you know,
no real more security than anyone else at any other
jewelry store. There were times when we'd even leave our
door open, but it got to the stage where we
would need well, I'll give you an example my last shop,
which was fairly small, I think we spent seventy five
pounds on security. Smoke cloaks. Smoke cloak is it's just
(31:24):
a simple box. You hit a button and it fills
the room with smoke so that people can't see where
they're going. I had laser beam alarms around my property
at home, another fifty sixty thousand pounds for security. Still
front doors, windows that were unbreakable.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
But with the increased security at watchdealers, their stores themselves
have become less attractive with thieves. Now they've taken to
targeting individuals instead.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
These people are going to the smarter areas where the
high end boutiques are and the fashionable, swanky restaurants are
to find their victims, and they find them in the street.
They can have spotters inside working inside the restaurant, a
waiter or a waitress. It's very simple. They serve a customer,
they see they're wearing one hundred grand watch, they WhatsApp
(32:13):
their friends outside and then when he leaves, they'll follow him.
No strike. But these guys are very well educated. They
know the job. They're professionals, being a victim of robbery
myself on three occasions, and they're actually very very good
at what they do.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
The Panthers focus on these enormously expensive items like diamond
t rs and million dollar watches. Makes up these sense
for a thief. They're targets graph and other elite brands.
Makes sense too, since these are places best stocked with
what they're after. But for this gang of Serbian criminals,
(32:54):
the choices they've made about what to steal and who
to steal from might be coming from a more personal place.
Coming up next on Infamous International, the Pink Panther's story.
Speaker 13 (33:10):
The previous secutive sanctions imposts on Serbia totally criminalizes the
economy smuggling becomes a huge part of the economy. And
that's really starts in the nineties and has never changed.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
In Serbia, a decade of sanctions in civil war leaves
the country in shambles.
Speaker 13 (33:30):
There was a resentment built to the West with its
riches and wealth and fleshy lifestyle.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
And a generation who see crime as the best career.
Speaker 13 (33:41):
As soon as he turned eighteen, he started doing little
robberies and when a manager of that job, when he
saw a group of Serbian students coming in, he calls
security immediately because they knew about Milan Yepoya.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
That's next time on Infamous International, The Pink Panthers Story.
Infamous International The Pink Panthers Story was produced by Best
(34:18):
Case Studios in association with Koda's Story, hosted by me
Natalia ant Lava and written by Katrina Wolfe, Adam Pinkis,
Suzanne Myers, and David Markowitz, with help from Brent Katz
and Matt Levin. For Best Case Studios, Executive producer Adam Pinkis,
(34:39):
Senior producer David Markowitz, producer Katrina Wolfe, Associate producer Hannah
Libovitz Lockhart, and consulting producers Julie Goldstein and Louis Spiegeler
for Koda. Story reporting by Lane Greenberg with associate producer
Rebecca Robinson. Edited and sound designed by Gail Mullens and
(35:01):
Max Michael Miller. Music by Dave Harrington. Archival producers Marc
Degora and Paul Dallas. This has been an exactly right production.
Executive producers Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hart Stark, and Daniel Kramer,
with consulting producer Kyle Ryan
My name is Zavikonnen.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I am former police officer, was working in Paris and
was in charge the highest robberies of jewelries in Paris.
So I've been in the police during twenty five year.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Captain ervekon Nan was the lead investigator on multiple robberies
by the Pink Panthers in Paris starting in the early
two thousands. He saw firsthand how a group of Serbian
jewel thieves turned themselves into a global brand.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
The name of Pink Panthers was given after the robbery
in London after the graft.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Robberies back in two thousand and three, two men in
expensive suits entered a Graph jewelry store on New Bond
Street in London's West End. One of them was wearing
a conspicuous black wig that a security guard later said
looked like a cat. It was the middle of the
day and this luxury shopping district was full of people. Suddenly,
(01:00):
one of the men pulled out a gun, the other
a hammer. Three minutes later, the pair walked out into
the busy London streets with over thirty million dollars worth
of diamonds. Graphs sell some of the world's most exclusive,
(01:20):
expensive jewelry and high end watches. This was the first
time the Pink Panthers had targeted them, but the Panthers
would develop a taste for what Graph offers and would
return to them when they struck the Waffy Mall in Dubai. Now,
most of the jewels from this first Graph heist were
never recovered, but at least one was.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
The name of Pink Panthers was given by the newspapers
in England because our colleagues in London they found diamonds
in a pot of cream.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Cream.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
It was a jar of face scream and inside police
found a blue diamond worth seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
The thieves had left it behind when they made their
escape from London.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Okay, the fun of diamonds and it was a reference
to a movie, Pink Panther, and so the name was
given to this gang.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
At this time.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
It was something right out of the classic Peter Sellers
movie Return of the Pink Panther. The name given by
the British press stock media across Europe just loved it.
But this was not the first time the newly branded
Pink Panthers had struck. In fact, the Pink Panthers was
(02:38):
simply a new label for a vast underworld network that
was already running like a well oiled machine, and vlad
and Lazarevich, b Yana Mitch and Milan Lipoya were just
three of its latest recruits. I'm Natalia Antalava. I'm a
(03:03):
journalist based in Eastern Europe, and I'm going to take
you into the world of Serbia's most brazen jewel thieves.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
The most daring and successful diamond thieves in the world.
Speaker 5 (03:17):
Thirty to forty seconds in.
Speaker 6 (03:20):
Out They've stolen half a billion dollars worth of valuables.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Two well dressed men strolled into an exclusive jewelry store
in London and walked out with sixty six million dollars
in jewels. They called the Pink pantherst They're a loosely
connected group of over educated, underemployed, ambitious young people who
rose from the ashes of the Yugoslav Wars of the
(03:45):
nineteen nineties to commit elaborate smash and grab heists all
across the globe, often in broad daylight. This is infamous
international The Pink Panthers Story Episode two, Thick as Thieves.
(04:11):
Last time we heard how three young Serbian thieves had
traveled to Dubai from Eastern Europe in two thousand and seven.
The mastermind Mladen Lazarevich, the team's logistics lead, and Laden's
girlfriend Boyana Mitch and their friend Milan Li Poya. The
team had spent weeks in preparation for a robbery that
(04:32):
would make them all rich and famous. They drove two
Audi Sedans through the doors of the Waffy Mall and
straight into the Graph Jewelry store, making off with over
three million dollars worth of jewels, all in under a minute.
The heist was caught on cell phone video and posted
(04:52):
online within days. The Ping Panthers were a worldwide sensation,
but Conan of the Paris Police was well acquainted with
the Panthers long before Dubai, even before the British papers
gave them a name. In two thousand and one, they
had pulled off an ingenious robbery at one of the
(05:13):
most high jewelers in Paris called Boucheron.
Speaker 7 (05:16):
They have attacked Beauchamp, the jewelry on the place b
Loom and they attack the main windows.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
In fact, it was in the morning, very early.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
The shop was still closed.
Speaker 7 (05:26):
Okay, but the jewelries were still visible from outside.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Millions of dollars of jewels sitting on display right behind
the front window of a closed shop. It seems like
it's inviting trouble. But the store had a very special
security system.
Speaker 7 (05:40):
It is a specific glasses, very sophisticated. It resists when
you eat the window with the ammer or axis. But
if the departure is very high the glass, you can
break it. So they burn, in fact, the windows with
I don't know if the name in English, with a
big flame.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
It was a blowtorch. The thieves knew what they were
up against, and they had planned accordingly. They hid the
glass until it's brutal, neutralizing the security feature.
Speaker 7 (06:09):
So they break the window like this, and they have
took an egglace in the jewry. It was maybe three millions.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
It's very very smart.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
It was like in a movie.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
It was just like a movie. It's almost like that
was their intention.
Speaker 8 (06:28):
I always thought that the most important part of their
exploits was this part of them being media said, you
hear these guys out there interested in their image, you know,
interested in the way how public perceives them.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
The misvoint of is a Serbian film scholar who wrote
a film about the Being Panthers. For him, the Panthers'
style was clearly inspired by popular movies and television.
Speaker 8 (06:54):
In a very same way John Dillinger appeared after a
very long stint in prison, you went to cinema in
order to learn to speak again. So he used to
mimic dialogue for films. And I think that Pink Panthers
are a lot like Dillager. You know, their actions resemble
a lot of films using masks or some kind of
disguise that's from Mission Impossible.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
You know.
Speaker 8 (07:15):
It's a very curious thing, you know about how media
and movies informed.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
This, and journalists have made that connection as well.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
We've seem so many fun heist films.
Speaker 9 (07:26):
We love a complicated crime that is well executed, and
apparently they do too. My name is Eric Pape. I'm
a longtime investigative reporter. I've worked extensively for Newsweek magazine,
The Daily Beast that I've written for Vid Debray publications
around the world.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Eric Pape was based in Paris, where he first started
covering the Panthers in the late two thousands.
Speaker 9 (07:50):
I started writing about the Pink Panthers almost fifteen years ago.
They very much capture something in the popular imagination.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Pay reported on a number of the Pink Panthers heists
and some of the details struck him as especially creative.
Speaker 9 (08:05):
Police this may be one of my favorites talked about
the four busty ladies who entered the Henry Winston jewelry
shop in Paris, threw out a magnum and a grenade,
and then they escaped with about one hundred million dollars
in jewelry. Police said that they believed it was Pink
Panthers in drag.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
For the Panthers, plenty of heist is similar to making
a movie. Everyone has their part, their costume, They spend
weeks rehearsing, and on the day of the robbery it's
time to perform. Eric Paper calls another Panther heist where
distracting woodrobe choices play the key role.
Speaker 9 (08:42):
I believe it was in two thousand and five and
it was in Centrope on the Mediterranean coast.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
You would think they might want to dress in the
most mundane.
Speaker 9 (08:52):
Clothes imaginable to blend in, but instead they dressed in
these loud, very tacky tourist T shirts and they went
into a store right near the waterfront.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
Streets were thronged with tourists. That's something that they often do.
They often use.
Speaker 9 (09:06):
Masses of people or traffic as a cover because a
you can try to blend in afterwards, you can change
out of that flashy T shirt, for example, but also
the traffic and all the people make it hard for
police to respond. So they basically walked through the tourist
bron streets that were impassable to cars, and they got
in a waiting speedboat.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
A speedboat like something out of James Bond or maybe
the Italian Job.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
It's brazen and very well thought through.
Speaker 9 (09:34):
At the same time, if they just went in looking
like a couple of normal people like me and they left,
then would we be talking about them?
Speaker 3 (09:40):
These early highs show how big patners develop a signature style,
the one that reflects a deliberate use of drama and misdirection.
Speaker 9 (09:48):
They have made a tactical decision to draw attention to themselves.
It's kind of an interesting thing if you think about it.
The idea of having flashy when you want attention and
switching to to nondescript when you need to Everything is
thought through quite brilliantly.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
It's almost like a magician.
Speaker 9 (10:10):
The magician wants you looking somewhere, and they don't want
you looking somewhere else. And they have given so much
thought to what it's going to grab your attention and
what is going to not And in this case, the
you is all of the different witnesses.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
Who are likely going to end up speaking to authorities.
Speaker 9 (10:25):
So to me, it just gets at something really well crafted.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Crazy costumes, expensive cars, speedboats, all of it designed to
distract onlookers from the actual crime.
Speaker 5 (10:38):
They want the wow factor.
Speaker 9 (10:40):
And so I think strangely, by being extremely visible, by
dressing up these big, strong men, dressing up as women,
by doing all of these things that we associate with
being Panther films, with James Bond films, with countless heist films,
I think it actually makes it very very hard to
catch them, because it's not just someone walking in with
(11:00):
a gun saying this is a robbery and then running
away or jumping in a car. It's something so much
less probable than that that authorities would have a very
hard time predicting every one of these wild and crazy
crimes that they seemed to have committed.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Captain Irve Konnan of the Paris Police says, these early
years we're a kind of golden age for the Panthers.
Speaker 7 (11:24):
Between two thousand and two thousand and seven, they had
a fantastic opportunity to rub everywhere in the world because
you were able to travel.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
With false passport or for spassport.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
It was easy.
Speaker 7 (11:36):
You had no DNA, the TV was very bad and
sometimes did not exist, and Montenegro and Serbia there were
a lot of corruption in these countries, so they know
that as soon as they were in that country they
were not in danger. So there are ten years it
was open bar.
Speaker 5 (11:54):
They were able to do everything they want in the world.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
An open bar everywhere in the world. And though there
was no way to predict where the Pink Panthers would
strike next, their targets all shared a specific profile. Anywhere
the rich and famous gathered and shocked. They hit London,
Paris and Liechtenstein, Monaco and ski resorts in the French Alps.
(12:18):
And as their ambitions grew, so did the distance the
Panthers were willing to travel.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
One was the guy we arrested.
Speaker 7 (12:25):
We had wire tape on him and we understood that
he traveled in Japan, and after that we found picture
where he's in Japan with his girlfriend, so he was
going there to check if he was able to make
a robbery.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
They were traveling everywhere in the world, and two major robberies.
Speaker 7 (12:41):
Were committed in Tokyo by them, two major robberies.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
So the pig Panther thing is kind of legendary in
Japan because it was one of the first international jewel
heights ever in the country.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Jake Adelstein is an investigative journalist who has been covering
crime and for thirty years. He literally wrote the book
on it. His memoir Tokyo Vice became a major TV
series he remembers one of these panther heists.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
So, first of all, the crime took place in Kinza,
which is one of the most expensive places in Tokyo.
Even now, it's loaded with these high end shops like
Uivatan shops and Channel shops and Bulgary and these luxury
brands that are high end and the Japanese people of
certain wealth really love, and so it's also a place
where a very expensive high end jewelry.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
It's May two thousand and seven, just two months after
the heist at the Wafimont. Two panthers arrived at Tokyo's
Narita Airport with their sites on a particularly valuable piece
of jewelry, a diamond encrusted tiara. They've given themselves two
months to put a plan in place. They study the
(13:51):
area carefully and decide to approach the story they've targeted
on bicycles Towards the end of the workday. The streets
will be crowded and they'll easily blend in.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
It's five pm on June fourteenth. First came this guy
in wearing a suit, and then came another guy in
a white mask almost immediately after him. He shot the
tear gas in the faces of the clerks. They stole
this tierra and a necklace and other things worth about
the tier itself was worth like two million dollars, and
then they sold a necklace and other things were probably
worth maybe close to a million dollars. And they did
(14:24):
it all in about thirty two seconds. Thirty two seconds
they entered, they broke into it, they stole the stuff,
they were out of there within thirty two seconds, which
is kind of amazing.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
This kind of thing never happens in Japan. The Tokyo
police are totally taken aback.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
So the Japanese police were kind of baffled by this
crime because they came in fast and they left very fast,
and this was the time before Japan was covered in
closed circuit TV, so there wasn't great footage of these guys.
They didn't leave any fingerprints behind, even though they were
not wearing gloves, which really surprised anybody, and all they
did was take the merchandise they are aiming for.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
But since the Waffi mol heist in Dubai, the Panther
brand of robbery had become all too familiar for law enforcement,
and the Tokyo police immediately have their suspicions.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
From the very beginning, they suspected that these might be
members of the Pink Panther.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
They also have one small bit of evidence. The thieves
dumbed the empty can of tear gas not far from
the jewelry store.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
So they decided to go with the can of tear
gas and see what they could find. But they found
out that the spray was a mass market animal repellant,
which used in France to scare of wild dogs and
other animals.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
This one clue is enough to convince them that the
crime is international in nature and that is enough to
bring an INTERPOL.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
The Japanese police are incredibly good at cooperating with Interpol
and working with them even with the language barrier, and
making sure that the crime is perpetrated on Jepanesy soil,
and they want to capture the person. They're dedicated and
they spend lots of manpower in hours and they will
send people overseas to help gather the information to put
together the case.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
With the help of INTERPAL, Japanese authorities are able to
track the serial number and they can to a military
surplus store in Marseille in the south of France. Meanwhile,
Tokyo police are able to piece together the timeline of
the heist.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
So what the police were able to put together is
that they came in at five pm thirty two seconds.
They had stolen everything that they needed. They hopped on
bicycles about four hundred meters away. They threw away the
tear gas, They dropped the bicycle, They got in a car.
They took apart the tierra. They took off all the
diamonds what they couldn't use from the tier. They flushed
(16:40):
on the toilet. Then they headed in the Reda airport
and left. There is a possibility that they met with
the mistress of an Italian jewelry dealer before they left
and made a transaction there, But that's what police were
able to put together.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
The Japanese authorities, together with Interpol, embark on an international
manhunt using global intelligence gathering and surveillance, and their diligence
pays off. One suspect is caught in two thousand and
nine in Cyprus, the other in twenty ten in Rome.
The jewels themselves were never recovered, but the details of
(17:24):
how these Pink Panthers dismantled the highly recognizable tiara into
loose stones points to another hallmark of the Pink Panther brand.
Not only do they know how to steal a two
million dollar piece of jewelry, they know how to sell it.
Speaker 10 (17:54):
Now, let's talk about what you do if you've come
into possession of a large amount of stolen high end jewelry.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Scott Selby is the author of Flawless Inside, the largest
diamond heist in History. He's a leading expert on the
black market diamond trade.
Speaker 10 (18:12):
The Panthers they like to hit high end shops high
end jewelry. These are things that are already polished, that
are already ready to be sold. They've been cut in
such a way to really have the highest value, to
look the most beautiful. There's a lot of things that
then come into play with how you fence those, depending
upon exactly what you stole and what kind of value
(18:32):
you're expecting to get back from it.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
The panthers intentionally target the most expensive jewelry from the
most famous stores, but these are not the easiest items
to turn into quick cash.
Speaker 10 (18:44):
Generally, they've stolen from high end, name brand jewelry stores,
and so with those you're going to be facing some
decisions pretty quickly, right because having a brand name associated
with a jewelry as well as the intricate design of
that jewelry gives it a high percent of the value.
Here's the problem is, if it's something recognizable, if it's
(19:06):
something that costs fifty million dollars, from some famous jeweler,
everybody in the business will know what it is and
anybody else would just google it, right, So then what
you would probably do is you would unfortunately have to
lose the craftsmanship of the jewelry as well as the
value of the brand by removing the individual stones from
(19:27):
it and melting down the gold. If you sell something
to a fence, particularly things that are harder to sell
on the rule of thumb that's been used for a
long time is ten cents on the dollar.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Right.
Speaker 10 (19:38):
So now imagine that Tiffany's diamond. You've now removed the
polished diamond from the engagement ring and you've melted the
ring down for its silver value, which is tremendously less
than you know it being a finished product.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
But let's be honest, when what you've stolen is worth
tens of millions of dollars, you can probably afford some markdowns.
And what about really big.
Speaker 10 (19:59):
Stone, It's going to depend. Like let's say you have
a big necklace with the pink panther. Sometimes they've stolen
something where there's a primary stone that's large, famous enough
maybe even to be named. It's going to be something
really special that anybody in the world in the business
would recognize it.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Something for example, like the one hundred and twenty five
carrot diamond necklace known as a contest de vendome. The
panther stole that in two thousand and four. It was
worth an estimated thirty one point five million dollars.
Speaker 10 (20:32):
So that one, let's put on the side. It's really
hard to move, but there's going to be a lot
of accompanying stones with it, and a lot of these
will be relatively generic, so it should be pretty easy
to move. They're probably going to be flawless. One carrot
maybe two carrot white diamonds. The first thing you're going
to want to do is look on it's called the girdle,
(20:52):
and what that basically is is if you have your
gemstone line flat, so you have a profile view. It's
going to be the widest part. It's a part that
divides the top and the bottom of the diamond, and
it's become common over the years for there to be
a laser inscription there. Then what you have to do
is you have to see if there's the equivalent of
a serial number or certification number or something.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
There a certification that could identify the jam and tell
you exactly where it came from.
Speaker 10 (21:19):
So that's the first thing they're going to look for,
is are their numbers on the side, And if there are,
that's a problem because anybody anywhere along the process could
look it up right. You could very easily polish those off,
but you need somebody that's in the business that polishes diamonds.
So that's something where you're going to need a corrupt
individual to work with.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Finding a corrupt individual in this shadowy world's called Selby's
talking about doesn't sound difficult. I mean, this is where
the Pink Panthers live. On CNN, Anderson Cooper talk to
filmmaker Havana Marking, who made a documentary about the Panthers,
about the group's extensive support network.
Speaker 11 (21:56):
Diamonds are the key thing that they are professional at
and do the best at, mainly because they've got incredible
connections to diamond centers like Antwerp, a huge European center
of diamond trading. I was lucky enough to make a
contact of the Panthers called mister Green, who is a
fence and he's the person who they take the diamonds too.
(22:20):
He gets them recut, he creates completely new sort of
certificates of origin for them, and is able to he
has the connections to then sell them back into the
clean market.
Speaker 10 (22:35):
So once he gets something into the legitimate stream of commerce,
you've got it made. Because one diamond could change hands
eight times in a week in Antwerp, Belgium.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Scott Selby again.
Speaker 10 (22:45):
But the problem is is people there will remember certain
kinds of stones. These are people who really care about
what they're doing, and there's an artistic element to it.
These are communities where people know each other and have
heard of things. So you can't just introduce basically the
big pendance stone from some necklace you stole in Japan.
You can't just introduce that on the other side of
(23:06):
the world and nobody has any questions, right.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Right, These rare stones might be the most valuable, but
they're also the hardest to fence without bringing a lot
of unwanted attention. Still, when you have the right connections,
you have options.
Speaker 10 (23:20):
One choice is is you can sell it on so
the buyer knows it's stolen and they're comfortable with that.
And traditionally there's a market for very high end stones
in Hong Kong and Dubai where people might not ask
so many questions, right, So you could have people who
are willing to buy something like that. So that's one option.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Okay, but what if we're dealing with a stone that
is a little too famous.
Speaker 10 (23:44):
Something that's sort of unfortunate but sometimes needs to be done.
Is if you have something truly unusual, you may find
yourself forced to cut it into smaller pieces. If you
show up with a thousand of these stones, the first
person to buy its going to know that it's stolen,
and there'll be a big discount involved, right, But the
(24:05):
person they sell it on to you will have no idea,
and the person after them and the person after them,
and these stones move fast, fast, fast, and Antwerp. They
all go through Antwerpt, Belgium for the most part, and
the next thing you know, it'll be in your local
strip model and then an engagement ring and you yourself
could be worreing an engagement ring with a stone that
was stroller and nobody would know.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Given how complicated it is to move stolen diamonds and
the criminal network required to do it, you have to
wonder about the economics. Is stealing diamonds actually a good business.
My colleague Elon Greenberg spoke to Don Palmery, a master genmologist,
appraiser a gem certification and assurance lab in New York.
Speaker 6 (24:50):
We are greaters and certifiers of diamonds and gemstones, and
we do a great deal of work for the law
enforcement and insurance industries. I've been involved in so many
of these cases afterwards, when they begin to recover some
of the jewelry and especially things like big diamonds that
have been recut and then try to remarket through the
(25:12):
legitimate marketplace. Sadly, there's always a market for hot diamonds
and jewels of great value, and very sadly it's tied
right back to our industry. So you have to understand
that these are stones that travel around the entire globe.
They go from one major auction to another. They go
(25:34):
from the hands of wealthy people in Asia, Europe, the
United States, South America.
Speaker 12 (25:40):
Once this compromiser degraded, right, how do they recoup that
original value? How do you inflate it? I understand how
you decrease it, but how do you increase.
Speaker 6 (25:50):
It again by getting a legitimate grading report on the
previously stolen stone. And the way to do that is
to in some way disguise it. Real way to disguise
it would be either to damage it where you're creating
flaws in the stone, or you recut it. But if
you recut it enough, you can remove other tailtale identifying marks,
(26:14):
then the laboratory just grades it. They're grading tens of
millions of diamonds every year, and I think some things
have slipped through the cracks.
Speaker 12 (26:23):
So when someone pulls off a heist right and steals
millions of dollars worth of let's say, diamonds or other gemstones,
it seems like then they fence it for pennies on
the dollar. Why don't they knock off a liquor store
like it seems like for all that effort and all that,
you know, it looks glamorous, but they're getting pennies. You
know why at an atm you know, it doesn't seem
(26:45):
like the margin is there.
Speaker 6 (26:47):
Oh it is. Explain how first of all, the average
bank robbery they only get what a few thousand dollars anymore, three,
four or five thousand dollars. But if you gee, I
don't want to encourage your audience to think about this
as the next great thing to do. But we're talking
about small items with one of the greatest stores of
(27:09):
inherent value. So if you've got a ten kara d
flawless diamond, you know, basically you're talking about a million
dollar stone. Let's say you only get two hundred thousand
dollars for it. What liquor store do you know has
two hundred thousand dollars? Think about any other thing of
great value. A bar of gold, I mean a bar
of gold. Let's say it's ten ounces. You know today's money.
(27:33):
What's it worth sixteen thousand dollars? And try running down
the street with a ten ounce bar gold in your pocket?
But with gems, it's a whole lot easier. It's very compact,
great storehouse of value.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Diamonds were always a high priority target for the Panthers,
but they also had a soft spot for high end watches.
Thorpe is a retired watch dealer with forty years of
experience in the business.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
And now I'm spending my time as a full time
YouTuber and enjoying every minute of it. Mainly focused on
anti watch crime.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Paul fell under the spell of watches early.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
My dad was a big watch guy. I remember falling
in love with a TIMEX on another boy's risk at
school when I was five years old, and that was it.
I was bitten by the bug. I caught watch disease.
I've taken every known medication a man to cure it,
but it's never worked.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Paul's love of watches gives him an insider's understanding of
their appeal to thieves.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
I think the big thing is with what is and
you've also mentioned diamonds. There is the fact that they
are easily transportable, They are obviously valuable, and therefore a
great desirable asset for the criminals because you can't get
on a plane with a million dollars in cash someone
who's going to stop and ask you questions. But you
can fit a million dollars with a diamonds in your pocket,
(29:01):
or a million dollar watch, and no one is going
to buy an eyelid. They retain a huge part of
their original value even when it's.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Stolen, and that value has only grown over time.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
The black market pre two thousand, I mean back then,
the value of our Rolex watch on the black market
would have been about a third of its retail value,
so still a decent return if you've got enough of them. Today,
by comparison, that same watch on the black market is
worth between eighty and one hundred percent of its retail value,
(29:34):
and in some cases two hundred percent of its retail value,
despite the fact that it's stolen. Particularly since around about
I would say twenty seventeen, the luxury watch market has
exploded right across the world and certainly in London now.
I mean, if you throw a stone in the are,
it's probably going to land and fall on a luxury watch.
They're easy to transport and that's why I believe the
(29:55):
watch black market has in many instances taken over from drugs.
And I'm told that the value of luxury watches has
risen a lot faster than the value of illegal drugs
on the street. So a lot of these gangs have
been taking their money out of drugs and putting it
into luxury watches.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
From drugs to watches. Is it really such a better business.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
That it's risk versus reward for these criminals. If they're
caught with a kilo of Class A drugs, they're going
to go out to prison. In the UK, you're looking
at say between ten and twelve years. If you steal
a luxury watch, you're probably going to be out in
eighteen months. And if you look at the risk versus
the reward, if you steal three Richard Mills and a
(30:39):
dozen rolics in a twelve month period, that's going to
met you somewhere in a reason of one point five
million pounds in cash, or wherever you take payment.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
With those kind of returns, it's no wonder that watches
grew in popularity with the criminal class, and like other
jewelry stores, watch dealers have had to adapt.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Two thousand and ten, we were pretty regular, you know,
no real more security than anyone else at any other
jewelry store. There were times when we'd even leave our
door open, but it got to the stage where we
would need well, I'll give you an example my last shop,
which was fairly small, I think we spent seventy five
pounds on security. Smoke cloaks. Smoke cloak is it's just
(31:24):
a simple box. You hit a button and it fills
the room with smoke so that people can't see where
they're going. I had laser beam alarms around my property
at home, another fifty sixty thousand pounds for security. Still
front doors, windows that were unbreakable.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
But with the increased security at watchdealers, their stores themselves
have become less attractive with thieves. Now they've taken to
targeting individuals instead.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
These people are going to the smarter areas where the
high end boutiques are and the fashionable, swanky restaurants are
to find their victims, and they find them in the street.
They can have spotters inside working inside the restaurant, a
waiter or a waitress. It's very simple. They serve a customer,
they see they're wearing one hundred grand watch, they WhatsApp
(32:13):
their friends outside and then when he leaves, they'll follow him.
No strike. But these guys are very well educated. They
know the job. They're professionals, being a victim of robbery
myself on three occasions, and they're actually very very good
at what they do.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
The Panthers focus on these enormously expensive items like diamond
t rs and million dollar watches. Makes up these sense
for a thief. They're targets graph and other elite brands.
Makes sense too, since these are places best stocked with
what they're after. But for this gang of Serbian criminals,
(32:54):
the choices they've made about what to steal and who
to steal from might be coming from a more personal place.
Coming up next on Infamous International, the Pink Panther's story.
Speaker 13 (33:10):
The previous secutive sanctions imposts on Serbia totally criminalizes the
economy smuggling becomes a huge part of the economy. And
that's really starts in the nineties and has never changed.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
In Serbia, a decade of sanctions in civil war leaves
the country in shambles.
Speaker 13 (33:30):
There was a resentment built to the West with its
riches and wealth and fleshy lifestyle.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
And a generation who see crime as the best career.
Speaker 13 (33:41):
As soon as he turned eighteen, he started doing little
robberies and when a manager of that job, when he
saw a group of Serbian students coming in, he calls
security immediately because they knew about Milan Yepoya.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
That's next time on Infamous International, The Pink Panthers Story.
Infamous International The Pink Panthers Story was produced by Best
(34:18):
Case Studios in association with Koda's Story, hosted by me
Natalia ant Lava and written by Katrina Wolfe, Adam Pinkis,
Suzanne Myers, and David Markowitz, with help from Brent Katz
and Matt Levin. For Best Case Studios, Executive producer Adam Pinkis,
(34:39):
Senior producer David Markowitz, producer Katrina Wolfe, Associate producer Hannah
Libovitz Lockhart, and consulting producers Julie Goldstein and Louis Spiegeler
for Koda. Story reporting by Lane Greenberg with associate producer
Rebecca Robinson. Edited and sound designed by Gail Mullens and
(35:01):
Max Michael Miller. Music by Dave Harrington. Archival producers Marc
Degora and Paul Dallas. This has been an exactly right production.
Executive producers Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hart Stark, and Daniel Kramer,
with consulting producer Kyle Ryan
Host
Natalia Antelava
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