Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Zarin Elizabeth, What's up? How you doing girl?
I'm good. Hey listen.
You know it's ridiculous, yes, and not the feather bow I'm wearing. But I wanted to tell you this. In two thousand and four, there was a cookbook by this dude, Brian D. Price, that was published, right, and Price was a former Texas prison inmate, and he was a prison chef and he prepared many of the last meals at the prison where he was locked up. So he decided to share his collection of last meal recipes and he called his cookbook Meals to Die For. Oh God, right, yeah, right,
And I learned apparently this is common. There are a lot of cookbooks and photo essays and academic journals about last meals. Like there was one paper publishing twenty twelve in the journal Appetite. It was all about death row nutrition. And they analyzed two hundred and forty seven last meals and they found the average meal came in at about twenty seven hundred calories. There were four requests from Texas and Oklahoma that all topped seven thousand calories.
No surprise, seven twenty seven hundreds more than an.
That's like a full day's meal, right, we're eating. Yeah, and then seventy percent of the prisoners they asked for fried foods, Okay, mostly because they're being killed in the South, right. Sixteen percent ordered Coca Cola with their last meal. And of the two hundred and forty seven inmates, how many wanted diet coke Elizabeth zero three three?
Yeah.
But the most ridiculous part of all this last meals that I looked up to was I found just how petty this lone star state can be. In twenty eleven, Texas stopped offering condemned inmates a last meal. And why would Texas choose to do that? Because of one man, just one man, Lauris Russell Brewer. He ordered a huge meal, two chicken, fried steaks, a pound of barbecue, and right, so he decides not to eat any of it and he's just like, throw me in the chair and he
let the meal go cold. That pissed off this Texas state so much they decided the whole state of Texas like, we're not letting good barbecue go to waste again. No more last meals? Were anybody ridiculous?
What that is ridiculous, completely ridiculous Texas.
Right.
I don't know what else is ridiculous. I do an eight hundred member heist gang.
Wait what.
This is ridiculous? Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. Who we I love a good heist there, Yeah, you do who. I've talked about heist teams before, like Hatton Gardens, Cut, Lloyd's of London one.
Another good crew.
The Great Train.
Robert the Governor was on both of those, right, Yeah, the Great Train Robbie, not the Good.
Crew at Pierre Hotel.
Yeah, you got a lot of cruise.
Those heist teams were maybe like six to ten people. I think that's a lot because like, the more you have, the more likely it is that someone's going to talk.
Yeah, and also you don't want that whole clown car effect trying to pile out.
And we've talked about the cinematic nature of crimes too. The criminals they like to emulate movies about really spectacular heightst I love that heat is a.
Huge, one big calling card in the crime world. Apparently, point break another good one for me.
For me, like the stylistic ones, and now the Pink Panther.
Wait the Clusa.
Path You've seen the pink Have you seen Return of the Pink p I have seen them.
All, starting with Shot in the Dark. I love them.
Just like a recap The Pink Panther. Pink Panther is a nineteen sixty four comedy classic about a bumbling French detective named Cluso he tries to stop a diamond thief. The pink panther in the film was a gymnast played by Julie Christie. She is the jewel thief, right, No, I'm just kidding. The pink panther is the very large pink diamond in the movie.
Oh, I thought David Niven. No wait, oh I thought he's known as the pink Panther. No, the panther is the gem. You're totally right, and Jullie.
Christy isn't there. In two thousand and three, I got you so good?
You did?
In two thousand and three, thieves pulled off an audacious robbery in London at a store called graph Ah. Okay, it's an elite jewelry store.
I'll take your word for it.
Yes. Graph says they sell quote the most fabulous jewels in the world. Good for you have to say it.
Like that, Oprah saying Oprah to each.
Other Victoria Beckha. They are customers. But also if you just say Oprah, you hope that like, you know, cashmere jumpsuit, superior your house exactly.
That's just how I asked for thanks, right, Oprah.
Oprah. Graph specializes in colored diamonds. They're the ones who popularized yellow diamonds, which apparently he used to be considered flawed.
Yeah, and then they switched it.
Now they're like, no, you want like it, We're gonna like we.
Put a color on it. Yeah for you. This one is a chocolate diamond.
Yeah, I like that, don't you. At super post jewelry stores, they don't make they don't make the security measures overt. Everything's really subtle and seamless, or so I'm told, I don't know what I hear. So on that day in two thousand and three, a man named Nivoisia Denik. He walked into the store, big old serb.
I was just about to ask.
So he was wearing a suit, and he was also wearing a big elvis wig as you do, big old pompadoor sitting a skew on the top of his head. According to the New Yorker security thought, quote, he was a rock star in disguise or a wealthy man suffering from a disease. That not the greatest way to be described. They're like, what does he look like? Well, I don't know. He's either a rockstar in disguise or a rich guy with a disease.
Only one of two choices. And this one.
Scotland yard detective described his wig as quote, it looked like a car was lying on his head. It's like, what okay, okay, But his suit was immaculate.
So this explains a lot about British engineering. If you take a wig in a car.
I'm just saying, well, and like you realize that he looks the part with the with the suit as long as it got that. Like I feel like your suit, like your clothing or your haircut can convey wealth. Yes, like rich people have like really good haircuts.
Yeah, it always it always looks good, usually shoes and haircuts on men, and then for women it's the accessories and the hair haircuts.
Yeah, so this guy he walks in he wants to see a twelve carrot diamond ring and the clerk presents it to him.
It's a long daddy.
It costs four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Yeah, that's a big that's a total bigin he's like, you know what, this is too glamorous. Show me something smaller, Like, all right, dude. So but then he pulls out a gun and he orders everyone on the floor.
No, I said something smaller.
So another man, Pedrick Vyjosevic, he enters the store and he just starts smashing display cases with a hammer. He's grabbing jewelry, stuffing it in this bag he has in all these two guys they grabbed forty seven pieces worth twenty three million pounds. That's a lot. That's in today's money. That's forty seven and a half million dollars. I'll take it, yeah, right in like five minutes down. So then they run
off into like the busy Mayfair streets. A security guard managed to tackle Nivoisha and pin him down until the cops came. Scotland Yard was immediately on the cap.
Of course.
They eventually tracked down a man from Montenegro named Milan Jovitch as an accomplice to the crime. When they searched his flat, one of the detectives saw a jar of skin cream in the bathroom. He opened it up, stuck his finger in it, took a little taste, stuck his finger back. Good stuff, and he felt something and he pulled out a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars blue diamond ring. Wow, hidden in the cream.
That's where I had put it. Dude, that's a great call. Most people wouldn't look there.
In return of the Pink Panther, thieves hit a diamond in a jar of face cream. And that's how the Pink Panther Gang got its name.
Oh, just because of that one because of.
That one move. Oh so they didn't just find the ring, they found blank fake Italian passports, you know, like we have blank ones. So apparently Italy was a common pass through for criminals from Eastern Europe. Let me give you some background, please slowed it on melos of it.
Oh yeah.
Became president of Serbia in nineteen eighty.
Nine, slow bo big hair.
Yeah huh. This started an intensely criminal era in all ways you can imagine, aside from the ethnic cleansing and murder, criminal gangs basically ran the government.
Yeah. I used to get my Serbian friend Chris all the hard time about this.
Yep, there you go. There were black market cigarettes, gas, electronics, anything you could think of. Much of the smuggling went by boat via Italy. In January of nineteen ninety four, the Bosnian Wars going on. Serbia had been experiencing hyper inflation, and that was engineered by Melosovitch. It had been in hyperinflation for two years. What was the inflation rate? I have no idea three hundred million percent?
Is that even possible? Just stop counting, right, million?
So this allowed Melosovich to control the Serbian people. They had to buy everything on the black market, and that was run by the government, which was run by criminals, corruptions, totally out of control. An entire generation of young men had been starved out and exploited by their own government entirely, and they had glimpses of what life could be like when they see Western Europe. And then they also had all this training, either from the government or just from
life on the street, to be cunning and evasive. So when the regime finally collapsed in two thousand and one, all these young men and women made their way to Italy or France looking for a better life, and they were very rarely well received. No one wanted them there. So for these people who'd been raised in poverty and violence and maybe forced to commit atrocities, they didn't care. They didn't care about anything. What were laws? What are rules? Oh?
Yeah care. They're very much existentialists forced into that position.
Uh huh. And so there's all this wealth for the taking, like, well, I'm going to take you know, that's what they do. So back to Scotland Yard and that graph heist, right, the police use Milan's phone records to track him down to an apartment in Paris that belonged to Pedrick vy Josevic. Pedrick was in the wind though, so still the investigation pushes on Steve Alexander, a Scotland Yard detective. He met up with French detectives who tackled organized crime. These are
their stories. I don't know if they had juicy booties, but they had a really rad name, La Brigade dire pasim do bed Detism.
Wow.
I didn't say that right, but it's the Brigade for the Repression of Bandit Tree. The Brigade for the Repression of band Tree. That's the rpb b RB. It's the BRB, yes, okay. So they shared their cases and they realized that a similar crew seemed to have committed about twenty robberies just like the one at graf And when they looked at surveillance footage, it looked like Pedrog had been running heists
in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Geneva, Barcelona. Like they're just matching him up on all that very much.
He's the one with the wig, right, the Elvis wig, Yes, Pedrag?
So no, no, no, that was a different dude. Pedrick came in after. Oh, he's the smasher. So police finally did capture Pedrig as he was driving to Italy from France. He wouldn't talk, obviously, he wouldn't talk about anything. Eighty percent of the jewels from that graph heist were never recovered eighty percent and Pedrick not cooperating. But it started to look like this wasn't the first heist. Back in two thousand and one, Pink Panthers robbed a jewelry store
in the French coastal resort town of beertz Over. Been there never been there. I really want to go, though. There were so many places that we talk about that I want to go. Anyway, they were clever. They coated a bench across from the shop in wet paint so that people wouldn't see and be witnesses.
That's really smart.
Yeah, that's kind of like their first big heist. In December of two thousand and two, a man strolled into the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
Uh huh.
He wore a smart suit and carried himself with confidence.
Okay.
He perused the various shops in the Grand Canal shops. He stopped at the Bernard K. Passman jewelry store.
I know what that is, ringing name.
He went inside and he told the saleswoman that he wanted to ask about an item in the window. So he guides her by the arm out into the concourse to point to a particular piece. As this happens, another man entered the star. He's wearing a beret, which isn't like particularly inconspicuous in Las Vegas. He asked another sales associate in the store to show him some pieces in the case. Then two more men came in and they stood next to this really large display case. They're admiring
an impressive piece of jewelry. Since the two saleswomen were engaged, there was no one to help these two new guys and no one to keep an eye on what they were doing. So just a couple of minutes go by. Then the two men left. Then the bray guye splits. Finally, suave guy in the suit he leaves stores empty. You know what else was empty? The case that contained the million dollar millennium necklace.
Oh how did they get into the case so quickly?
They just fiddled with it?
Yeah, yeah, that's impressive.
This the millennium necklace was called a wearrible sculpture. Oh platinum, black coral, two thousand diamonds. Oh wow, right, and it's just in there in this case. And so they wiggle it opens, putting their pants and walk off thanks to this distraction technique that they used, you know, these amorphously European accented fellas. It's gone. So meanwhile, after the graft job, the robberies continue. In two thousand and four, the Pink Panthers took token. You none of the four person crew there.
There's two Serbian men. One Serbian woman and a Scottish woman who'd been pinched for robbery and Italy. Once none of them spoke Japanese, one of the men headed into lesupa diamont Couture des Machi in the Ginza district district, Yeah, jewelry store. So he asked to go up to the third floor to see a particular famous necklace that they had.
He even took pictures of it. A couple of days later, the same guy came in again, but this time he was all loved up with the Serbian lady and they're looking around and oh, should we get.
Something in.
And they bought a necklace and so that kind of establishes, you know, credibility. A few days after that, the two men return. This time they're ready. They got their wigs on. You know, there's nothing better than a wig heist. So they got the wigs on. They're swanming around the store. They're like going upstairs. They even were like taking pictures of the staff, like beautiful gray. Oh really, Oh yeah,
they're just hamming it up. So one of the men distracted a salesman and then like socked him in the face and pepper sprayed him. Oh and then the thief grabbed that same particular necklace that he'd taken a photo of before, and he made a break for it. He and his accomplice darted out the front doors, right by the Serbian woman and the inexplicable Scott, who were keeping watch from a cafe across the street. The men had
stolen the Comtesse de vendome necklace. It had one hundred and sixteen diamonds in it.
Who's going to count?
How much do you think this thing was worth?
I'm forty million?
Yeah, thirty three million dollars.
I was kidding thirty to throw a darted number.
This is so much money. I can't get my head around.
Uh.
It was the greatest robbery in the history of Japan. It's the Tokyo Police. They conducted an exhaustive and precise investigation. They made headway that the European forces hadn't been able to accomplish, but it wasn't enough, and in the end they they wound up not knowing more than they started with.
So they got away.
Yeah, totally got away. Let's take a break and we come back. I'll tell you more about this incredible crime spree. Welcome Zarin Elizabeth, the Pink Panther Gang.
Yes, with the cream and the Diamond game and the Pallises can't believe you got me on.
So the Pink Panther Gang wasn't just one outfit. It was a network of cruise. Some law enforcement estimates put it as eight hundred strong how is it? And others say that there's a core group that's maybe like sixty or so people.
Ye.
Do I think they're exaggerating the numbers to make them sound like we need more fun.
I don't think so though, when you hear the number of rests. So there are both men and women who are part of this organization. The women have to be gorgeous, that's their requirement.
Look like an Eastern European rule of christ.
Is And they're the ones who have to stake out the targets. They get access and they study the store.
Okay, these kind of like as a distractionary tactic too.
Yeah, because no one's you know, everyone's going to pay attention to this beautiful woman, but not in the way that they want to be. So they work with an artist after they've been in a store, and the artist makes a rendering of the place based on her description, so she has to be super precise, has to have an excellent memory, and.
Then I bet their accounting steps and all that stuff.
Everything depends on that drawing. There are some cops who liken the pink panthers to an octopus, tentacles everywhere, but that would imply like a leader ahead, someone calling the shots. Opinions differ on this, but no one has had any luck figuring out who is controlling this enterprise, if anyone.
Maybe more of alture than an actual.
Well know, A lot of law enforcement kind of likens it to Al Qaeda of various cells, and that it's very loosely kind of organized.
Reminds me of the old Hashiitians with the original assassins, like of the man in the Mountain, Hassani Sabbah. He'd like send people out into Europe to do stuff. Yeah, and it's like nobody could ever find anything on them because they were so they wouldn't talk.
And that's exactly it. None of these people ever talked. Some said there's no top person or group giving orders. Others say it's like a one particular Eastern European crime family.
But they're connected to andre Get the Italian Southern crime.
Well, that's exactly it. A lot of people think they're connected to the Italian mafia because, after all, top Italian mafia figures wanted by the Italian government are living out in the open in Montene exactly. So each crew has a transporter, someone not there at the heist, and that person gets the diamonds across borders, generally headed to Antwerp or Israel.
Uh huh, totally.
They know where they're taking the goods. The Pink Panthers make about fifteen percent value of the jewelry. They're given a fifteen percent cut.
Okay, so that's their Essentially their market is fifty percent on top of whatever they.
Okay, the courier takes five percent, and the big dog is the fence. That's the guy who quote unquote legalizes the gems, he repurposes them, puts them back in the market. He gets about thirty to forty percent cut.
They're most likely a jeweler in either Antwerper.
Israel, and a lot of times the guys higher up in the chain are former paramilitary under Melosovich. Oh of course, yeah, they're murderers, yes, But however, the Pink panthers are never violent. Most of the time. When they have guns, the guns are fake and they've never killed anyone.
They sound more like the crimes of Tito's Partisans when yugoslav when Serbia was Yugoslavia and Tito was fighting against first the Nazis and then like you know, they would do a lot of that type of banditree, right, bandit tree is very much in the idea, and it.
Is in the culture where if you go in all these different articles that I read, if you go and you talk to people there, you know, there's a certain amount of pride to it, like, yeah, steal their stuff and bring it back here exactly. So these the street thieves, though they were often too young to have participated in the genocide of the you know, Muslims during the Balkan Wars. Rumor is that a lot of them have severe drug problems that fuel their need for cash. But they're a
little too organized for that either way. But the pair of military types, they all have contacts to other shady folks all around the globe of course, Africa where the mines are, Belgium where the diamond brokers are. You know that Kimberly diamond certification. It was you know, created to prevent the movement of blood diamonds, but it actually provided
a really easy way to move hot rocks. Of course, so these fake certificates of origin, so you just create a brand new stone, you have the certificate, and it just moves right along. Recutting the stones also allowed them to eliminate the microscopic serial numbers some jewelers imprint.
I was wondering because I know they've been doing the laser edging and stuff.
So if you you know, recut it off, it goes. Dave Samuels wrote a really fantastic article in The New Yorker about the Pink Panthers. His research was beyond extensive, and he did a lot of really dangerous works, securing interviews with people in Eastern Europe who had intimate knowledge the people. Uh oh wow, Yeah, he totally does. A Serb contact of his described the Pink Panthers as a rather loosely organized gang with support in lots of different
Eastern European countries. From the article quote it's wrong to speak of panthers as Serbian. He emphasized, they are the children of a country that doesn't exist anymore.
Huh. It reminds me of Mere Costa Rica talking about Yugoslavis.
I'm from the country exactly. So these criminals without a home, they just kept criming. And it wouldn't be a good crime story without a good prison escape. Yeah, so I told you about the robbery and beer. It's the one where they painted the bench. One of the pink panthers involved was Dragon Meekitch. Okay, Dragon d r A g A n Dragen Meekich. He skipped out on service in the Serbian Army in favor of criming.
Good call.
He developed into quite the criminal inclination.
It was a call he knew who he was.
He got in really good with all sorts of shady organizations as he worked his way up. A month after the beer Eats job, he drove a range rover through the front window of Van Kleef and Arpels and Khan just smash and grab.
I lost the summers in my eyes.
Thieves. They shoved the jewelry into golf bags and then fled. They left the range rover behind, and Dragon left his DNA behind range rover. So a few years later he and his crew they robbed a jewelry store in the French Alps, as you do. They got five hundred thousand dollars worth of gems and bobbles in that one. The next day, Dragon tried to buy a train ticket to get out of Dodge. The problem is that he tried to pay with a five hundred year old note. That's
a big bill. It's huge, and no one really carries them. Okay, you're buying a train ticket like.
Just you know, it just makes you stand out.
Yeah, it's like if we had five hundred dollars bills that you're going around.
Oh, we still don't ask why we got rid of those, like any or whatever?
Yeah, AnyWho. So it's suspicious. The cops get called because it's like, why are you trying to buy this like forty euro ticket with a five hundred euro bill?
Oh yeah, okay, yeah okay, and that makes a lot more sense.
So the cops come. They catch him. Also with him a large bag of stolen jewelry, some tear gas okay, and a Serbian passport in someone else's name.
Maybe he was on his honeymoon, you don't know.
Who knows knows. But of course he didn't talk but say a thing. He wouldn't talk really anything like how you doing? He doesn't answer. November seventeenth, two thousand and three, he was being brought back to jail after a hearing. He pulled away from the cops escorting him, and he ran across the road into an elementary school. Okay, one of the cops responsible for his transport shot him in the leg. So he's running that he's bleeding. He's running across the yard. The kids starts screaming.
He's still running, and he went and like that's the most serbian thing.
He went and hidden, hid in the bush and he was Then they caught him because you know, you're bleeding in a bush at an elementary school. Yeah, trail right, and the kids screaming and pointing. So he gets transferred to a really secure facility after that.
But wait, I'm over here waiting.
Not too long after settling into his new digs at this secure facility, a pickup pulled up to the walls of the prison. The men inside jumped out, and they put a ladder against the wall and started climbing up. When they got to the top of the wall, they raised machine guns and started firing. They fired at the watchtower damn.
So they did like military operation, but just like a ladder.
Yeah, exactly. So the guards are hiding in fear of their lives. One of the guys tosses the ladder and some wire cutters down into the yard, into the possession of Dragon.
Nice.
Dragon uses the wirecutters to sele through the barbed wire and the ladder to make it to the top of the wall, slips right down the original ladder scurries to freedom. He's never been caught. I'm still out there.
It keeps saying, one of my best friends is Serbian. This is some of the most serbian stuff I've heard. Like, this has got.
Yes. So the crew they just keep striking right, one jewel job after another. In two thousand and five, they showed up in Santrope. They were there with the Band of Solet for the Santrope pan So they put on what sounded like Hawaiian shirts. Okay, every news article so there's big flowery shirts, so whatever, we'll say Hawaiian.
Shirts, like Aloha shirts, Hawaiian shirts and not like.
I just imagine them in like Magnum p I costumes and just all greased up with bandasole and these Hawaiian shirts and short shirts and like deck shoes. That's in my mind.
I like that good picture.
And so they barge into this jewelry store right in the middle of the day. How did they escape?
They probably had everyone to acted by all that thiemet on display.
They did it in like such a magnum p i way. They escaped in a waiting speedboat. Yeah, well it's it's the best image. It's also right out of To Catch a Thief. Yeah, so it's more cinematic imagery. In two thousand and seven, they hit Dubai.
Oh wow, that's brazen.
They stole two audies.
I'll shoot you there.
Yeah, and they got to work. They drove to Waffi City, which is this really opulent Egyptian themed mall. It has two hundred and fifty high end shops. It's connected to a five star hotel.
Wow, it's connected to an airport.
Lots of columns in stone, and.
A lot of cheesecake factory.
It was ten at night when they decided to just floor it and they rammed the front doors of the mall.
We just drove into the mall, drove right into the mall like the Blues Brothers just completely.
Yes, they were two audis, a black one and a white one. People were still shopping when this happened.
Amazing. This is like a thirteen year old meek a design crime.
It's totally like a grand theft auto.
Yeah, exactly, video games like this, Guys.
The first car backs in like hits it rear ended. The second one is following going forward. Yeah. So the first car smashes through and then it keeps going and it rams the front of a jewelry store. What jewelry store? The Graph store again is just getting hit worked once before?
Why they got good stuff.
So I met a couple once who stopped at every cracker barrel they'd see, and they were keeping track, hoping one day to eat at all of them. I had a c I've had cracker barrel once and it was one too many times. But this is kind of like that. With Graph. They're just hitting all the Graphs around the world and making at the glove box they have a little notepad check do buy check next. So Graph the
crew jumped out of the Audies ran into Graph. They had hammers, fake guns, they weren't packing real weapon choice. They smashed the display cases and they shoved all the pieces into duffel bags. Just as quickly as they'd arrived. They were gone with three point four million dollars in jewelry.
This is like if Fast and the Furious decided to do crime instead of trying to stop crime. Is that what happens in those They do crimes to stop crimes. It's a whole thing.
Okay, anyway, three point four million dollars in jewelry. There's security footage of this all over YouTube.
You can watch the whole thing.
They left, Yeah, yeah, they left. They drove off on Zaabiel Road, ditch the cars, which they set on fire.
Good good move always.
But the fire didn't do the job. They thought it was Dubai. Police were able to recover DNA in one of the oudies.
Wow, the fire really didn't do the job.
They arrested four of the criminals and accomplices. I think the reporting is so fuzzy on this. It's not easy to track who gets busted where and when. And sometimes they identify people, but they can't catch them about.
Theyre using fake names. Sometimes they're not always the same completely.
Yeah, they've got all sorts of crazy passports. We've heard about graft getting it. But another luminary of the jewelry world they got it hit too.
Zarin what LVM or whatever?
Zarin? What closure? Oh yes, I want you to picture it. It's October six, two thousand and seven. You work as a manager at the Harry Winston store in Paris. Harry Winston was a jeweler called the King of Diamonds. He was the gem broker for the wealthy. He started in the nineteen twenties buying up the estates of socialites. He would redesign the pieces into more modern styles, which showed off his skill at jewelry design. He built himself into
a brand and was known for the finest pieces. He actually owned the Hope Diamond for a while, and he donated it to the Smithsonian in nineteen fifty eight. Look at him, there it goes today. His jewels are particular favorites on the red carpet, and the store in Paris is impressive. Doesn't have display cases on the main floor, that would be gosh. They have little lounge areas where customers sit while the jewels are brought to them, and this allow for tighter security. It's covered with CCTV like
a Vegas casino. There are microphones everywhere. When sales associates hand someone apiece or take it from the case, they very subtly state what they're doing. Would monsieur like to see this necklace, gigontique? I just took it from the display case in the cornell. I like to refer to this item as four seven eight fe D, but others call it the Star of Pawnee, gifted to the King of America by Little Sebastian in eighteen seventy two. So there you are, Zarin. You're just arriving at work.
I'm my job.
The streets of Paris are just waking up. People ride by on bikes, probably with bagattes. A man strolls by playing.
An accordion ah.
Parisians shuffle along, faces to the sun, cigarettes in hand. The security guard opens up the shop and lets you and your coworkers in. You are ready to sell incredibly priced gems to the rich and famous. What you don't know was that four members of the Pink Panthers were already inside. You settle in at your desk, rousing your computer screen awake, only to see the solitaire game you'd left open the night before. The sales staff wipe down the display cases and adjust a necklace or bracelet here
and there. Suddenly you hear a commotion from upstairs. You hear the import export director scream. You leap to your feet. As you rush up the stairs, you're greeted by four large men, all with their faces and heads covered. They shove you towards the safe and tell you to open it. One has a gun to your head. You can't focus, You're a mess. Zarin numbers.
I don't know numbers.
So they call your assistant. She opens the safe.
Thank you.
The men clear it out and they head for the display cases. With incredible quickness, they scoop up valuable pieces shove them into bags. One of the burglars yells to the rest that they're out of time, so they snatch the security videotapes, douse you and the rest of the staff. You tear gas and take off out the back door. Tear gas, tear gas. In all, they stole four hundred and eighty pieces worth thirty six million dollars.
They're very good at their job.
None of it has ever been recovered. Thirty six million. Attorney General Pascal Furet was quoted in Vanity Fair as saying of the heist quote Harry Winston was what we call a coupe des clap, a stunning coup, very rare, said Fulet, his right eye closing for a few beats, A high spectrum armed robbery that could only been executed by serious individuals that quote the top of the heap, as your Sinatra would say of grand banditry.
I don't know if I like better? Is the Sinatra analogy of like a Sinatra comparison exactly, or like the fact he's got one eye blinking with truth.
So we have this devastating robbery at Harry Winston that it could only get worse. Oh yeah, when we come back from this.
Break, I'll tell you all about it.
What's ups Aaron, No, not much as it's sitting here during the break. And I had a question though, because I was thinking about this all during those delicious commercials So good. You said they got thirty six million jewelry, and you said that they had the fences like in Antwerp and in Israel. But is that, like, how do you get that? What do you do with that thirty six million dollar? Julie? Once you've walked out of the store.
Right.
Yeah, So they tell I'm not asking this because I plan to do anything. I'm just asking theoretically.
I'm assuming I'm curious. They take the gems, they hand them off to the courier. The courier gets them across the border and gets them, let's say, to Antwerp and Antwerp. It's divided up most likely between a couple of these fences. They recut the gems, they re they melt down the gold or the platinum and they kind of reconfigure it into new pieces.
So they kind of do it Harry Winston did with the old.
Jewels precisely, precisely, and then off it goes around the world. There actually there was one stone that was traced around. They had like figured out where it was stolen by the pink panthers and bounced around the globe, and the last place that was known to be was on the finger of Vladimir Putin's galpal.
That's fun.
Yeah, that's super fun.
And it landed on the finger of Vladimir PuO.
So October sixth, two thousand and seven, the pink Panthers, they stole thirty six million in jewels from the Harry Winston store in Paris. You remember that you were there.
Sarin, I'm still shaking.
Yeah, December fourth, two thousand and eight. So oh, you know, a little more than a year later, they struck again, this time also in Paris, this time also at the Harry Winston store.
Like you guys had good stuff, like.
It worked the first time. So it's after five o'clock. Four dudes, big old serbs, walking down the street. They're pulling a suitcase behind in them like a little roller suitcase, like they're a flight attendant. They're dresses women, I should add that in oh okay, and not convincingly, so like they have really long blonde wigs and spike heels on, so.
Like when like when detectives on TV, or are they gonna have to like walk in the park as a woman so they can get like attacked by the questions, look like.
It's Jerry in Drag Jerry or back and drag. Okay, so they're not convincing. They walk by the Cartier store. A salesperson there looks out and is like those are some suspicious characters, and watches as they go towards Harry Winston. Someone at the Louis Vuitton store also saw them and thought theyir a big body and crazy get ups were a little out of place, so they told security and then everyone's kind of watching as they they go up to the Harry Winston door and you have to get
buzzed in. They get buzzed in, They're like, well, they must must have been vetted, and they go the vetting process at Harry Winston was basically glancing at him and then buzzing him in.
I was wondering, do you.
Think they'd be a little more security minded with their history like Vitan over there doing the all see something, say something, not in free wheeling Harry Winston. Maybe they're just trying to be more accommodating and non judgmental.
Yeah, I think that's probably why.
Well that's probably not. Uh so whatever. Last time the thieves were hiding inside the store. This time they're coming in through the front door during business hours. They're welcomed in and taking upstairs, but halfway up the stairs they strike. They whip out guns, they pull out a hand grenade, and they're yelling in these really thick slavic accents, nobody move or I will smoke you all. And then like a seventies cartoon hippie hanging on the corner, says cool man,
Like they have cartoons, they're living cartoons living. You have no idea how the rich lives.
No, I really don't. I hear things. I hear things.
And so they start plundering the store. They popped open that roller bag and started just filling it with goods. Weirdly, they knew all the employees' names and home addresses. They're like, you there a Tienn who lives at three ninety eight Rue Barney Miller Kill on the floor. And weirdly, they also knew that there was a secret compartment in the safe.
That has to be so unnerving for the employees.
Maybe terrifying. They knew about the secret compartment in the safe, and they also knew that the secret compartment held a piece that was delivered the day before. Wow, it was a thirty one carrot diamond ring.
So did they mic the place when they went through the first day?
Shall see? So this ring eight million dollars. It was called Legros Pierre, the big Stone, the Big Peter, Big Peter, Yes, big gross Peter. They grabbed it up, okay, you know, just like stuck it.
They got their hands on the big pan and got the.
Big Peter and I'm shoving it down my pants. In twenty minutes, they grabbed over four hundred pieces. Wow, worth seventy three point three million dollars.
You know what, I'm trying to get their dam in the wrong business, like stop.
Seventy three point three million dollars.
That's multiple lifetimes of money for most people I know.
And they're like, I have a lot of problems here. I have a problem with the fact that there's like seventy three point three million dollars worth of jewels in this store.
Store, Like anyway, you need to practice being rich. You're having a lot of shock at some of the most entry level things. And I'm behind you, I admit, But so.
Four hundred pieces then they're gone. This was to be known as La case des the break In of the Century. As the French police and Lloyd's of London the underwriter, they were following all leads. They put ads in everyday papers in the immigrant suburbs, and they offered a one million dollar reward.
So they're just basically fishing for snitches pretty much.
And they started getting tips. Well, they got crazy ones.
Yeah, blah blah blah. A lot of them, My brother Steve.
I don't like the looks of them. A lot of the more garbage, but a couple panned out. Their investigation highlighted a real problem for Harry Winston. That security guard, the one who let the guys in Dragon Yeah, Malud jinad.
Wait a minute, Malud Malud.
He wasn't in the store for the first robbery, but he'd been the one to lock up the night before. Oh coincidence when the team that's when they came in, right. They had CCTV footage of him strolling around the store during the second hit while his coworkers were tied up.
So he's the only one who's not.
Only one not tied up. And Malud had been living it up since the robbery. He and his girlfriend they took this expensive seaside vacation. They paid in cash all my dude, Malud and the police were able to connect the security guard with another guy, who then connected to another guy who connected to the heist team. Okay, members of the crew had been taking really pricey vacations themselves, like twelve thousand euro trips. They were leasing supercars with cash deposits.
De Niro and goodfellows would be pissed.
Yes, yes, In all, eight people were arrested and tried for the robbery. The supposed ring leader did do ya yawee mm hmm. He claimed that he was just a good between with the Pink Panther who was the brains of the operation. But when they raided his place they found a good number of the pieces from the second Harry Winston heist.
I'm just lucky that way.
They found eight hundred thousand euros and a Yugoslavian RBM eighty rocket launcher.
Wow.
You know what else? They found the big Peter oh rest Pierre Where Peter right there? It was hidden in a jar of face cream.
Yes, I like a good callback.
A good callback. Of course. This was in no way the end for the Pink Panthers.
No rocking.
Oh yeah.
August two thousand and nine, they hit the Graft store in London again.
Gotta go back with your hits play the favorites.
Forty three pieces worth forty million pounds were taken. This is the money.
This just digger around. Yeah, I mean it's like you can't really comprehend.
And how like how did they get insured? Again? That's my question. Anyway, everything was eventually recovered and two people were arrested for that one. In twenty eighteen, they hit the Doge's Palace in Venice, Italy.
Wow.
Christie's was having an exhibition called Treasures of the Moughles and Maharages.
So there's a lot of sapphires and rubies.
Yeah. They took two million dollars in gems that belonged to a member of the Katari royal family. Yeah, stones on them. Yeah, that's high. That same year, they stole gems belonging to the Swedish monarchy from a cathedral.
So they're just like hitting up the royalists.
Oh yeah, No, they took an elaborate tiara from a British manor house.
Like who has jewels?
That's right, that's right. In June of twenty twenty two, they broke into a Dutch art fair and tried to steal a diamond and sapphire earring set worth more than ten million dollars.
Were they just walking by and sow it and got excited? I guess what's going on?
Grad They were unsuccessful and they fled the scene, but they were captured by police. I feel like they're getting sloppier over time.
It feels like it's impromptu. I was joking before, but it does feel like.
Well, and I think as they get further and further away from the horrors of the Balkan Wars, they get softer. Oh you know, and I don't I think that at this point we're twenty years out.
Yeah, so now you have a different culture. Never exactly. Yeah, and they're starting to rest on their laurels.
They're getting successful, right, Well, hundreds have been arrested since two thousand and one. Hundreds. There are always hundreds more to take their place. That's why the eight hundred figure.
Doesn't they hiring?
Can I send Yeah, send them a they want a head shot, I'll.
Give them Mercedes to help me with the Serbian come on.
In his article in The New Yorker, David Samuel spoke with one of the founding members of the Pink Panthers, Pavel Punch Stana Morovitch. Punch Morovich, Punch Morovich, Oh.
Punch Stana Morovitch. Okay, but his nickname is Punch.
Yeah, because he was a safe breaker, not because he punched people. But he would like he used that cattle thing Yeah, him in the head.
And the cattle.
What's the movie?
Uh, no Country for old Man.
Yeah, the friend O Rod, Friend Rod, he used that to break the safe. So he called himself a gem heist mastermind, and he said he was tired and willing to talk with a friend though, Rod.
Can I bring my friend?
This is what he said quote, there's no head, there's no end, there's no tail, there's no beginning. You're talking to the it. You're talking to the highest of the highest. You're talking to Oz, the man behind the mirror. It's me, he says. What I did, I was the best.
Wow. Yeah, Punch, Punch.
So there is a quote for him that really stood out to me though, all right, hit me with it. The truth is, says Punch, some Pink Panther members don't even know they're in the Pink Panthers. Isn't that incredible? You think I'm on this local team. Oh guess who you're working for?
I got someday for your son.
If there's a serb on your team, Yeah, you're working for So what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Apparently I've been working for the Pink Panthers because I was working work with this I did, and he was very successful. We were very successful. I'm thinking I might have been helping them.
It could be.
So I'm really stokedn't even know I was a member of organized crime. Put them look at me. You learn something new every day? What about you?
Organized painting crime?
Exactly?
That's it. My takeaway is, I can't get my head around these numbers.
Yeah, I'm right there with you.
Thirty million, seventy four million, Like this is ridiculous.
I mean, like one of my Bobby Benia's agent, like working on a contract, who comes up with these numbers.
Ah. I want that money, but I don't want to do the crime. That's it. That's all I have. One. You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. Email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Leave a talkback on the iHeart app please. Yeah, I love those things. It's thirty second voice anonymous voicemail.
Yeah, drop some.
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