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