Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Zarin Elizabeth, What's up? How you doing girl?
Speaker 3: I'm good. Hey listen.
Speaker 2: You know it's ridiculous, yes, and not the feather bow
Speaker 2: I'm wearing. But I wanted to tell you this. In
Speaker 2: two thousand and four, there was a cookbook by this dude,
Speaker 2: Brian D. Price, that was published, right, and Price was
Speaker 2: a former Texas prison inmate, and he was a prison
Speaker 2: chef and he prepared many of the last meals at
Speaker 2: the prison where he was locked up. So he decided
Speaker 2: to share his collection of last meal recipes and he
Speaker 2: called his cookbook Meals to Die For. Oh God, right, yeah, right,
Speaker 2: And I learned apparently this is common. There are a
Speaker 2: lot of cookbooks and photo essays and academic journals about
Speaker 2: last meals. Like there was one paper publishing twenty twelve
Speaker 2: in the journal Appetite. It was all about death row nutrition.
Speaker 2: And they analyzed two hundred and forty seven last meals
Speaker 2: and they found the average meal came in at about
Speaker 2: twenty seven hundred calories. There were four requests from Texas
Speaker 2: and Oklahoma that all topped seven thousand calories.
Speaker 3: No surprise, seven twenty seven hundreds more than an.
Speaker 2: That's like a full day's meal, right, we're eating. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then seventy percent of the prisoners they asked for
Speaker 2: fried foods, Okay, mostly because they're being killed in the South, right.
Speaker 2: Sixteen percent ordered Coca Cola with their last meal. And
Speaker 2: of the two hundred and forty seven inmates, how many
Speaker 2: wanted diet coke Elizabeth zero three three?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But the most ridiculous part of all this last meals
Speaker 2: that I looked up to was I found just how
Speaker 2: petty this lone star state can be. In twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: Texas stopped offering condemned inmates a last meal. And why
Speaker 2: would Texas choose to do that? Because of one man,
Speaker 2: just one man, Lauris Russell Brewer. He ordered a huge meal,
Speaker 2: two chicken, fried steaks, a pound of barbecue, and right,
Speaker 2: so he decides not to eat any of it and
Speaker 2: he's just like, throw me in the chair and he
Speaker 2: let the meal go cold. That pissed off this Texas
Speaker 2: state so much they decided the whole state of Texas like,
Speaker 2: we're not letting good barbecue go to waste again. No
Speaker 2: more last meals? Were anybody ridiculous?
Speaker 3: What that is ridiculous, completely ridiculous Texas.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I don't know what else is ridiculous. I do an
Speaker 3: eight hundred member heist gang.
Speaker 2: Wait what.
Speaker 3: This is ridiculous? Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
Speaker 3: and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and
Speaker 3: one hundred percent ridiculous. Who we I love a good
Speaker 3: heist there, Yeah, you do who. I've talked about heist
Speaker 3: teams before, like Hatton Gardens, Cut, Lloyd's of London one.
Speaker 2: Another good crew.
Speaker 3: The Great Train.
Speaker 2: Robert the Governor was on both of those, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the Great Train Robbie, not the Good.
Speaker 3: Crew at Pierre Hotel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got a lot of cruise.
Speaker 3: Those heist teams were maybe like six to ten people.
Speaker 3: I think that's a lot because like, the more you have,
Speaker 3: the more likely it is that someone's going to talk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also you don't want that whole clown car
Speaker 2: effect trying to pile out.
Speaker 3: And we've talked about the cinematic nature of crimes too.
Speaker 3: The criminals they like to emulate movies about really spectacular
Speaker 3: heightst I love that heat is a.
Speaker 2: Huge, one big calling card in the crime world. Apparently,
Speaker 2: point break another good one for me.
Speaker 3: For me, like the stylistic ones, and now the Pink Panther.
Speaker 2: Wait the Clusa.
Speaker 3: Path You've seen the pink Have you seen Return of
Speaker 3: the Pink p I have seen them.
Speaker 2: All, starting with Shot in the Dark. I love them.
Speaker 3: Just like a recap The Pink Panther. Pink Panther is
Speaker 3: a nineteen sixty four comedy classic about a bumbling French
Speaker 3: detective named Cluso he tries to stop a diamond thief.
Speaker 3: The pink panther in the film was a gymnast played
Speaker 3: by Julie Christie. She is the jewel thief, right, No,
Speaker 3: I'm just kidding. The pink panther is the very large
Speaker 3: pink diamond in the movie.
Speaker 2: Oh, I thought David Niven. No wait, oh I thought
Speaker 2: he's known as the pink Panther. No, the panther is
Speaker 2: the gem. You're totally right, and Jullie.
Speaker 3: Christy isn't there. In two thousand and three, I got
Speaker 3: you so good?
Speaker 2: You did?
Speaker 3: In two thousand and three, thieves pulled off an audacious
Speaker 3: robbery in London at a store called graph Ah. Okay,
Speaker 3: it's an elite jewelry store.
Speaker 2: I'll take your word for it.
Speaker 3: Yes. Graph says they sell quote the most fabulous jewels
Speaker 3: in the world. Good for you have to say it.
Speaker 2: Like that, Oprah saying Oprah to each.
Speaker 3: Other Victoria Beckha. They are customers. But also if you
Speaker 3: just say Oprah, you hope that like, you know, cashmere jumpsuit,
Speaker 3: superior your house exactly.
Speaker 2: That's just how I asked for thanks, right, Oprah.
Speaker 3: Oprah. Graph specializes in colored diamonds. They're the ones who
Speaker 3: popularized yellow diamonds, which apparently he used to be considered flawed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then they switched it.
Speaker 3: Now they're like, no, you want like it, We're gonna
Speaker 3: like we.
Speaker 2: Put a color on it. Yeah for you. This one
Speaker 2: is a chocolate diamond.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like that, don't you. At super post jewelry stores,
Speaker 3: they don't make they don't make the security measures overt.
Speaker 3: Everything's really subtle and seamless, or so I'm told, I
Speaker 3: don't know what I hear. So on that day in
Speaker 3: two thousand and three, a man named Nivoisia Denik. He
Speaker 3: walked into the store, big old serb.
Speaker 2: I was just about to ask.
Speaker 3: So he was wearing a suit, and he was also
Speaker 3: wearing a big elvis wig as you do, big old
Speaker 3: pompadoor sitting a skew on the top of his head.
Speaker 3: According to the New Yorker security thought, quote, he was
Speaker 3: a rock star in disguise or a wealthy man suffering
Speaker 3: from a disease. That not the greatest way to be described.
Speaker 3: They're like, what does he look like? Well, I don't know.
Speaker 3: He's either a rockstar in disguise or a rich guy
Speaker 3: with a disease.
Speaker 2: Only one of two choices. And this one.
Speaker 3: Scotland yard detective described his wig as quote, it looked
Speaker 3: like a car was lying on his head. It's like,
Speaker 3: what okay, okay, But his suit was immaculate.
Speaker 2: So this explains a lot about British engineering. If you
Speaker 2: take a wig in a car.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, well, and like you realize that he
Speaker 3: looks the part with the with the suit as long
Speaker 3: as it got that. Like I feel like your suit,
Speaker 3: like your clothing or your haircut can convey wealth. Yes,
Speaker 3: like rich people have like really good haircuts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it always it always looks good, usually shoes and
Speaker 2: haircuts on men, and then for women it's the accessories
Speaker 2: and the hair haircuts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this guy he walks in he wants to
Speaker 3: see a twelve carrot diamond ring and the clerk presents
Speaker 3: it to him.
Speaker 2: It's a long daddy.
Speaker 3: It costs four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: a big that's a total bigin he's like, you know what,
Speaker 3: this is too glamorous. Show me something smaller, Like, all right, dude.
Speaker 3: So but then he pulls out a gun and he
Speaker 3: orders everyone on the floor.
Speaker 2: No, I said something smaller.
Speaker 3: So another man, Pedrick Vyjosevic, he enters the store and
Speaker 3: he just starts smashing display cases with a hammer. He's
Speaker 3: grabbing jewelry, stuffing it in this bag he has in
Speaker 3: all these two guys they grabbed forty seven pieces worth
Speaker 3: twenty three million pounds. That's a lot. That's in today's money.
Speaker 3: That's forty seven and a half million dollars. I'll take it, yeah,
Speaker 3: right in like five minutes down. So then they run
Speaker 3: off into like the busy Mayfair streets. A security guard
Speaker 3: managed to tackle Nivoisha and pin him down until the
Speaker 3: cops came. Scotland Yard was immediately on the cap.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 3: They eventually tracked down a man from Montenegro named Milan
Speaker 3: Jovitch as an accomplice to the crime. When they searched
Speaker 3: his flat, one of the detectives saw a jar of
Speaker 3: skin cream in the bathroom. He opened it up, stuck
Speaker 3: his finger in it, took a little taste, stuck his
Speaker 3: finger back. Good stuff, and he felt something and he
Speaker 3: pulled out a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars blue
Speaker 3: diamond ring. Wow, hidden in the cream.
Speaker 2: That's where I had put it. Dude, that's a great call.
Speaker 2: Most people wouldn't look there.
Speaker 3: In return of the Pink Panther, thieves hit a diamond
Speaker 3: in a jar of face cream. And that's how the
Speaker 3: Pink Panther Gang got its name.
Speaker 2: Oh, just because of that one because of.
Speaker 3: That one move. Oh so they didn't just find the ring,
Speaker 3: they found blank fake Italian passports, you know, like we
Speaker 3: have blank ones. So apparently Italy was a common pass
Speaker 3: through for criminals from Eastern Europe. Let me give you
Speaker 3: some background, please slowed it on melos of it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Became president of Serbia in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: Nine, slow bo big hair.
Speaker 3: Yeah huh. This started an intensely criminal era in all
Speaker 3: ways you can imagine, aside from the ethnic cleansing and murder,
Speaker 3: criminal gangs basically ran the government.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I used to get my Serbian friend Chris all
Speaker 2: the hard time about this.
Speaker 3: Yep, there you go. There were black market cigarettes, gas, electronics,
Speaker 3: anything you could think of. Much of the smuggling went
Speaker 3: by boat via Italy. In January of nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 3: the Bosnian Wars going on. Serbia had been experiencing hyper inflation,
Speaker 3: and that was engineered by Melosovitch. It had been in
Speaker 3: hyperinflation for two years. What was the inflation rate? I
Speaker 3: have no idea three hundred million percent?
Speaker 2: Is that even possible? Just stop counting, right, million?
Speaker 3: So this allowed Melosovich to control the Serbian people. They
Speaker 3: had to buy everything on the black market, and that
Speaker 3: was run by the government, which was run by criminals, corruptions,
Speaker 3: totally out of control. An entire generation of young men
Speaker 3: had been starved out and exploited by their own government entirely,
Speaker 3: and they had glimpses of what life could be like
Speaker 3: when they see Western Europe. And then they also had
Speaker 3: all this training, either from the government or just from
Speaker 3: life on the street, to be cunning and evasive. So
Speaker 3: when the regime finally collapsed in two thousand and one,
Speaker 3: all these young men and women made their way to
Speaker 3: Italy or France looking for a better life, and they
Speaker 3: were very rarely well received. No one wanted them there.
Speaker 3: So for these people who'd been raised in poverty and
Speaker 3: violence and maybe forced to commit atrocities, they didn't care.
Speaker 3: They didn't care about anything. What were laws? What are rules? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah care. They're very much existentialists forced into that position.
Speaker 3: Uh huh. And so there's all this wealth for the taking, like, well,
Speaker 3: I'm going to take you know, that's what they do.
Speaker 3: So back to Scotland Yard and that graph heist, right,
Speaker 3: the police use Milan's phone records to track him down
Speaker 3: to an apartment in Paris that belonged to Pedrick vy Josevic.
Speaker 3: Pedrick was in the wind though, so still the investigation
Speaker 3: pushes on Steve Alexander, a Scotland Yard detective. He met
Speaker 3: up with French detectives who tackled organized crime. These are
Speaker 3: their stories. I don't know if they had juicy booties,
Speaker 3: but they had a really rad name, La Brigade dire
Speaker 3: pasim do bed Detism.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: I didn't say that right, but it's the Brigade for
Speaker 3: the Repression of Bandit Tree. The Brigade for the Repression
Speaker 3: of band Tree. That's the rpb b RB. It's the BRB, yes, okay.
Speaker 3: So they shared their cases and they realized that a
Speaker 3: similar crew seemed to have committed about twenty robberies just
Speaker 3: like the one at graf And when they looked at
Speaker 3: surveillance footage, it looked like Pedrog had been running heists
Speaker 3: in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Geneva, Barcelona. Like they're just
Speaker 3: matching him up on all that very much.
Speaker 2: He's the one with the wig, right, the Elvis wig, Yes, Pedrag?
Speaker 3: So no, no, no, that was a different dude. Pedrick
Speaker 3: came in after. Oh, he's the smasher. So police finally
Speaker 3: did capture Pedrig as he was driving to Italy from France.
Speaker 3: He wouldn't talk, obviously, he wouldn't talk about anything. Eighty
Speaker 3: percent of the jewels from that graph heist were never
Speaker 3: recovered eighty percent and Pedrick not cooperating. But it started
Speaker 3: to look like this wasn't the first heist. Back in
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, Pink Panthers robbed a jewelry store
Speaker 3: in the French coastal resort town of beertz Over. Been
Speaker 3: there never been there. I really want to go, though.
Speaker 3: There were so many places that we talk about that
Speaker 3: I want to go. Anyway, they were clever. They coated
Speaker 3: a bench across from the shop in wet paint so
Speaker 3: that people wouldn't see and be witnesses.
Speaker 2: That's really smart.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's kind of like their first big heist. In
Speaker 3: December of two thousand and two, a man strolled into
Speaker 3: the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: He wore a smart suit and carried himself with confidence.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: He perused the various shops in the Grand Canal shops.
Speaker 3: He stopped at the Bernard K. Passman jewelry store.
Speaker 2: I know what that is, ringing name.
Speaker 3: He went inside and he told the saleswoman that he
Speaker 3: wanted to ask about an item in the window. So
Speaker 3: he guides her by the arm out into the concourse
Speaker 3: to point to a particular piece. As this happens, another
Speaker 3: man entered the star. He's wearing a beret, which isn't
Speaker 3: like particularly inconspicuous in Las Vegas. He asked another sales
Speaker 3: associate in the store to show him some pieces in
Speaker 3: the case. Then two more men came in and they
Speaker 3: stood next to this really large display case. They're admiring
Speaker 3: an impressive piece of jewelry. Since the two saleswomen were engaged,
Speaker 3: there was no one to help these two new guys
Speaker 3: and no one to keep an eye on what they
Speaker 3: were doing. So just a couple of minutes go by.
Speaker 3: Then the two men left. Then the bray guye splits. Finally,
Speaker 3: suave guy in the suit he leaves stores empty. You
Speaker 3: know what else was empty? The case that contained the
Speaker 3: million dollar millennium necklace.
Speaker 2: Oh how did they get into the case so quickly?
Speaker 3: They just fiddled with it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's impressive.
Speaker 3: This the millennium necklace was called a wearrible sculpture. Oh platinum,
Speaker 3: black coral, two thousand diamonds. Oh wow, right, and it's
Speaker 3: just in there in this case. And so they wiggle
Speaker 3: it opens, putting their pants and walk off thanks to
Speaker 3: this distraction technique that they used, you know, these amorphously
Speaker 3: European accented fellas. It's gone. So meanwhile, after the graft job,
Speaker 3: the robberies continue. In two thousand and four, the Pink
Speaker 3: Panthers took token. You none of the four person crew there.
Speaker 3: There's two Serbian men. One Serbian woman and a Scottish
Speaker 3: woman who'd been pinched for robbery and Italy. Once none
Speaker 3: of them spoke Japanese, one of the men headed into
Speaker 3: lesupa diamont Couture des Machi in the Ginza district district, Yeah,
Speaker 3: jewelry store. So he asked to go up to the
Speaker 3: third floor to see a particular famous necklace that they had.
Speaker 3: He even took pictures of it. A couple of days later,
Speaker 3: the same guy came in again, but this time he
Speaker 3: was all loved up with the Serbian lady and they're
Speaker 3: looking around and oh, should we get.
Speaker 4: Something in.
Speaker 3: And they bought a necklace and so that kind of establishes,
Speaker 3: you know, credibility. A few days after that, the two
Speaker 3: men return. This time they're ready. They got their wigs on.
Speaker 3: You know, there's nothing better than a wig heist. So
Speaker 3: they got the wigs on. They're swanming around the store.
Speaker 3: They're like going upstairs. They even were like taking pictures
Speaker 3: of the staff, like beautiful gray. Oh really, Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: they're just hamming it up. So one of the men
Speaker 3: distracted a salesman and then like socked him in the
Speaker 3: face and pepper sprayed him. Oh and then the thief
Speaker 3: grabbed that same particular necklace that he'd taken a photo
Speaker 3: of before, and he made a break for it. He
Speaker 3: and his accomplice darted out the front doors, right by
Speaker 3: the Serbian woman and the inexplicable Scott, who were keeping
Speaker 3: watch from a cafe across the street. The men had
Speaker 3: stolen the Comtesse de vendome necklace. It had one hundred
Speaker 3: and sixteen diamonds in it.
Speaker 2: Who's going to count?
Speaker 3: How much do you think this thing was worth?
Speaker 2: I'm forty million?
Speaker 3: Yeah, thirty three million dollars.
Speaker 2: I was kidding thirty to throw a darted number.
Speaker 3: This is so much money. I can't get my head around.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: It was the greatest robbery in the history of Japan.
Speaker 3: It's the Tokyo Police. They conducted an exhaustive and precise investigation.
Speaker 3: They made headway that the European forces hadn't been able
Speaker 3: to accomplish, but it wasn't enough, and in the end
Speaker 3: they they wound up not knowing more than they started with.
Speaker 2: So they got away.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally got away. Let's take a break and we
Speaker 3: come back. I'll tell you more about this incredible crime spree.
Speaker 3: Welcome Zarin Elizabeth, the Pink Panther Gang.
Speaker 2: Yes, with the cream and the Diamond game and the
Speaker 2: Pallises can't believe you got me on.
Speaker 3: So the Pink Panther Gang wasn't just one outfit. It
Speaker 3: was a network of cruise. Some law enforcement estimates put
Speaker 3: it as eight hundred strong how is it? And others
Speaker 3: say that there's a core group that's maybe like sixty
Speaker 3: or so people.
Speaker 4: Ye.
Speaker 2: Do I think they're exaggerating the numbers to make them
Speaker 2: sound like we need more fun.
Speaker 3: I don't think so though, when you hear the number
Speaker 3: of rests. So there are both men and women who
Speaker 3: are part of this organization. The women have to be gorgeous,
Speaker 3: that's their requirement.
Speaker 2: Look like an Eastern European rule of christ.
Speaker 3: Is And they're the ones who have to stake out
Speaker 3: the targets. They get access and they study the store.
Speaker 2: Okay, these kind of like as a distractionary tactic too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because no one's you know, everyone's going to pay
Speaker 3: attention to this beautiful woman, but not in the way
Speaker 3: that they want to be. So they work with an
Speaker 3: artist after they've been in a store, and the artist
Speaker 3: makes a rendering of the place based on her description,
Speaker 3: so she has to be super precise, has to have
Speaker 3: an excellent memory, and.
Speaker 2: Then I bet their accounting steps and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: Everything depends on that drawing. There are some cops who
Speaker 3: liken the pink panthers to an octopus, tentacles everywhere, but
Speaker 3: that would imply like a leader ahead, someone calling the shots.
Speaker 3: Opinions differ on this, but no one has had any
Speaker 3: luck figuring out who is controlling this enterprise, if anyone.
Speaker 2: Maybe more of alture than an actual.
Speaker 3: Well know, A lot of law enforcement kind of likens
Speaker 3: it to Al Qaeda of various cells, and that it's
Speaker 3: very loosely kind of organized.
Speaker 2: Reminds me of the old Hashiitians with the original assassins,
Speaker 2: like of the man in the Mountain, Hassani Sabbah. He'd
Speaker 2: like send people out into Europe to do stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's like nobody could ever find anything on them
Speaker 2: because they were so they wouldn't talk.
Speaker 3: And that's exactly it. None of these people ever talked.
Speaker 3: Some said there's no top person or group giving orders.
Speaker 3: Others say it's like a one particular Eastern European crime family.
Speaker 2: But they're connected to andre Get the Italian Southern crime.
Speaker 3: Well, that's exactly it. A lot of people think they're
Speaker 3: connected to the Italian mafia because, after all, top Italian
Speaker 3: mafia figures wanted by the Italian government are living out
Speaker 3: in the open in Montene exactly. So each crew has
Speaker 3: a transporter, someone not there at the heist, and that
Speaker 3: person gets the diamonds across borders, generally headed to Antwerp
Speaker 3: or Israel.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, totally.
Speaker 3: They know where they're taking the goods. The Pink Panthers
Speaker 3: make about fifteen percent value of the jewelry. They're given
Speaker 3: a fifteen percent cut.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's their Essentially their market is fifty percent
Speaker 2: on top of whatever they.
Speaker 3: Okay, the courier takes five percent, and the big dog
Speaker 3: is the fence. That's the guy who quote unquote legalizes
Speaker 3: the gems, he repurposes them, puts them back in the market.
Speaker 3: He gets about thirty to forty percent cut.
Speaker 2: They're most likely a jeweler in either Antwerper.
Speaker 3: Israel, and a lot of times the guys higher up
Speaker 3: in the chain are former paramilitary under Melosovich. Oh of course, yeah,
Speaker 3: they're murderers, yes, But however, the Pink panthers are never violent.
Speaker 3: Most of the time. When they have guns, the guns
Speaker 3: are fake and they've never killed anyone.
Speaker 2: They sound more like the crimes of Tito's Partisans when
Speaker 2: yugoslav when Serbia was Yugoslavia and Tito was fighting against
Speaker 2: first the Nazis and then like you know, they would
Speaker 2: do a lot of that type of banditree, right, bandit
Speaker 2: tree is very much in the idea, and it.
Speaker 3: Is in the culture where if you go in all
Speaker 3: these different articles that I read, if you go and
Speaker 3: you talk to people there, you know, there's a certain
Speaker 3: amount of pride to it, like, yeah, steal their stuff
Speaker 3: and bring it back here exactly. So these the street thieves,
Speaker 3: though they were often too young to have participated in
Speaker 3: the genocide of the you know, Muslims during the Balkan Wars.
Speaker 3: Rumor is that a lot of them have severe drug
Speaker 3: problems that fuel their need for cash. But they're a
Speaker 3: little too organized for that either way. But the pair
Speaker 3: of military types, they all have contacts to other shady
Speaker 3: folks all around the globe of course, Africa where the
Speaker 3: mines are, Belgium where the diamond brokers are. You know
Speaker 3: that Kimberly diamond certification. It was you know, created to
Speaker 3: prevent the movement of blood diamonds, but it actually provided
Speaker 3: a really easy way to move hot rocks. Of course,
Speaker 3: so these fake certificates of origin, so you just create
Speaker 3: a brand new stone, you have the certificate, and it
Speaker 3: just moves right along. Recutting the stones also allowed them
Speaker 3: to eliminate the microscopic serial numbers some jewelers imprint.
Speaker 2: I was wondering because I know they've been doing the
Speaker 2: laser edging and stuff.
Speaker 3: So if you you know, recut it off, it goes.
Speaker 3: Dave Samuels wrote a really fantastic article in The New
Speaker 3: Yorker about the Pink Panthers. His research was beyond extensive,
Speaker 3: and he did a lot of really dangerous works, securing
Speaker 3: interviews with people in Eastern Europe who had intimate knowledge
Speaker 3: the people. Uh oh wow, Yeah, he totally does. A
Speaker 3: Serb contact of his described the Pink Panthers as a
Speaker 3: rather loosely organized gang with support in lots of different
Speaker 3: Eastern European countries. From the article quote it's wrong to
Speaker 3: speak of panthers as Serbian. He emphasized, they are the
Speaker 3: children of a country that doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 2: Huh. It reminds me of Mere Costa Rica talking about Yugoslavis.
Speaker 3: I'm from the country exactly. So these criminals without a home,
Speaker 3: they just kept criming. And it wouldn't be a good
Speaker 3: crime story without a good prison escape. Yeah, so I
Speaker 3: told you about the robbery and beer. It's the one
Speaker 3: where they painted the bench. One of the pink panthers
Speaker 3: involved was Dragon Meekitch. Okay, Dragon d r A g
Speaker 3: A n Dragen Meekich. He skipped out on service in
Speaker 3: the Serbian Army in favor of criming.
Speaker 2: Good call.
Speaker 3: He developed into quite the criminal inclination.
Speaker 2: It was a call he knew who he was.
Speaker 3: He got in really good with all sorts of shady
Speaker 3: organizations as he worked his way up. A month after
Speaker 3: the beer Eats job, he drove a range rover through
Speaker 3: the front window of Van Kleef and Arpels and Khan
Speaker 3: just smash and grab.
Speaker 2: I lost the summers in my eyes.
Speaker 3: Thieves. They shoved the jewelry into golf bags and then fled.
Speaker 3: They left the range rover behind, and Dragon left his
Speaker 3: DNA behind range rover. So a few years later he
Speaker 3: and his crew they robbed a jewelry store in the
Speaker 3: French Alps, as you do. They got five hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars worth of gems and bobbles in that one. The
Speaker 3: next day, Dragon tried to buy a train ticket to
Speaker 3: get out of Dodge. The problem is that he tried
Speaker 3: to pay with a five hundred year old note. That's
Speaker 3: a big bill. It's huge, and no one really carries them. Okay,
Speaker 3: you're buying a train ticket like.
Speaker 2: Just you know, it just makes you stand out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like if we had five hundred dollars bills
Speaker 3: that you're going around.
Speaker 2: Oh, we still don't ask why we got rid of those,
Speaker 2: like any or whatever?
Speaker 3: Yeah, AnyWho. So it's suspicious. The cops get called because
Speaker 3: it's like, why are you trying to buy this like
Speaker 3: forty euro ticket with a five hundred euro bill?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, okay, yeah okay, and that makes a lot
Speaker 2: more sense.
Speaker 3: So the cops come. They catch him. Also with him
Speaker 3: a large bag of stolen jewelry, some tear gas okay,
Speaker 3: and a Serbian passport in someone else's name.
Speaker 2: Maybe he was on his honeymoon, you don't know.
Speaker 3: Who knows knows. But of course he didn't talk but
Speaker 3: say a thing. He wouldn't talk really anything like how
Speaker 3: you doing? He doesn't answer. November seventeenth, two thousand and three,
Speaker 3: he was being brought back to jail after a hearing.
Speaker 3: He pulled away from the cops escorting him, and he
Speaker 3: ran across the road into an elementary school. Okay, one
Speaker 3: of the cops responsible for his transport shot him in
Speaker 3: the leg. So he's running that he's bleeding. He's running
Speaker 3: across the yard. The kids starts screaming.
Speaker 2: He's still running, and he went and like that's the
Speaker 2: most serbian thing.
Speaker 3: He went and hidden, hid in the bush and he
Speaker 3: was Then they caught him because you know, you're bleeding
Speaker 3: in a bush at an elementary school. Yeah, trail right,
Speaker 3: and the kids screaming and pointing. So he gets transferred
Speaker 3: to a really secure facility after that.
Speaker 2: But wait, I'm over here waiting.
Speaker 3: Not too long after settling into his new digs at
Speaker 3: this secure facility, a pickup pulled up to the walls
Speaker 3: of the prison. The men inside jumped out, and they
Speaker 3: put a ladder against the wall and started climbing up.
Speaker 3: When they got to the top of the wall, they
Speaker 3: raised machine guns and started firing. They fired at the
Speaker 3: watchtower damn.
Speaker 2: So they did like military operation, but just like a ladder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So the guards are hiding in fear of
Speaker 3: their lives. One of the guys tosses the ladder and
Speaker 3: some wire cutters down into the yard, into the possession
Speaker 3: of Dragon.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 3: Dragon uses the wirecutters to sele through the barbed wire
Speaker 3: and the ladder to make it to the top of
Speaker 3: the wall, slips right down the original ladder scurries to freedom.
Speaker 3: He's never been caught. I'm still out there.
Speaker 2: It keeps saying, one of my best friends is Serbian.
Speaker 2: This is some of the most serbian stuff I've heard. Like,
Speaker 2: this has got.
Speaker 3: Yes. So the crew they just keep striking right, one
Speaker 3: jewel job after another. In two thousand and five, they
Speaker 3: showed up in Santrope. They were there with the Band
Speaker 3: of Solet for the Santrope pan So they put on
Speaker 3: what sounded like Hawaiian shirts. Okay, every news article so
Speaker 3: there's big flowery shirts, so whatever, we'll say Hawaiian.
Speaker 2: Shirts, like Aloha shirts, Hawaiian shirts and not like.
Speaker 3: I just imagine them in like Magnum p I costumes
Speaker 3: and just all greased up with bandasole and these Hawaiian
Speaker 3: shirts and short shirts and like deck shoes. That's in
Speaker 3: my mind.
Speaker 2: I like that good picture.
Speaker 3: And so they barge into this jewelry store right in
Speaker 3: the middle of the day. How did they escape?
Speaker 2: They probably had everyone to acted by all that thiemet
Speaker 2: on display.
Speaker 3: They did it in like such a magnum p i way.
Speaker 3: They escaped in a waiting speedboat. Yeah, well it's it's
Speaker 3: the best image. It's also right out of To Catch
Speaker 3: a Thief. Yeah, so it's more cinematic imagery. In two
Speaker 3: thousand and seven, they hit Dubai.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's brazen.
Speaker 3: They stole two audies.
Speaker 2: I'll shoot you there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they got to work. They drove to Waffi City,
Speaker 3: which is this really opulent Egyptian themed mall. It has
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty high end shops. It's connected to
Speaker 3: a five star hotel.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's connected to an airport.
Speaker 3: Lots of columns in stone, and.
Speaker 2: A lot of cheesecake factory.
Speaker 3: It was ten at night when they decided to just
Speaker 3: floor it and they rammed the front doors of the mall.
Speaker 2: We just drove into the mall, drove right into the
Speaker 2: mall like the Blues Brothers just completely.
Speaker 3: Yes, they were two audis, a black one and a
Speaker 3: white one. People were still shopping when this happened.
Speaker 2: Amazing. This is like a thirteen year old meek a
Speaker 2: design crime.
Speaker 3: It's totally like a grand theft auto.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, video games like this, Guys.
Speaker 3: The first car backs in like hits it rear ended.
Speaker 3: The second one is following going forward. Yeah. So the
Speaker 3: first car smashes through and then it keeps going and
Speaker 3: it rams the front of a jewelry store. What jewelry store?
Speaker 3: The Graph store again is just getting hit worked once before?
Speaker 2: Why they got good stuff.
Speaker 3: So I met a couple once who stopped at every
Speaker 3: cracker barrel they'd see, and they were keeping track, hoping
Speaker 3: one day to eat at all of them. I had
Speaker 3: a c I've had cracker barrel once and it was
Speaker 3: one too many times. But this is kind of like that.
Speaker 3: With Graph. They're just hitting all the Graphs around the
Speaker 3: world and making at the glove box they have a
Speaker 3: little notepad check do buy check next. So Graph the
Speaker 3: crew jumped out of the Audies ran into Graph. They
Speaker 3: had hammers, fake guns, they weren't packing real weapon choice.
Speaker 3: They smashed the display cases and they shoved all the
Speaker 3: pieces into duffel bags. Just as quickly as they'd arrived.
Speaker 3: They were gone with three point four million dollars in jewelry.
Speaker 2: This is like if Fast and the Furious decided to
Speaker 2: do crime instead of trying to stop crime. Is that
Speaker 2: what happens in those They do crimes to stop crimes.
Speaker 2: It's a whole thing.
Speaker 3: Okay, anyway, three point four million dollars in jewelry. There's
Speaker 3: security footage of this all over YouTube.
Speaker 2: You can watch the whole thing.
Speaker 3: They left, Yeah, yeah, they left. They drove off on
Speaker 3: Zaabiel Road, ditch the cars, which they set on fire.
Speaker 2: Good good move always.
Speaker 3: But the fire didn't do the job. They thought it
Speaker 3: was Dubai. Police were able to recover DNA in one
Speaker 3: of the oudies.
Speaker 2: Wow, the fire really didn't do the job.
Speaker 3: They arrested four of the criminals and accomplices. I think
Speaker 3: the reporting is so fuzzy on this. It's not easy
Speaker 3: to track who gets busted where and when. And sometimes
Speaker 3: they identify people, but they can't catch them about.
Speaker 2: Theyre using fake names. Sometimes they're not always the same completely.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they've got all sorts of crazy passports. We've heard
Speaker 3: about graft getting it. But another luminary of the jewelry
Speaker 3: world they got it hit too.
Speaker 2: Zarin what LVM or whatever?
Speaker 3: Zarin? What closure? Oh yes, I want you to picture it.
Speaker 3: It's October six, two thousand and seven. You work as
Speaker 3: a manager at the Harry Winston store in Paris. Harry
Speaker 3: Winston was a jeweler called the King of Diamonds. He
Speaker 3: was the gem broker for the wealthy. He started in
Speaker 3: the nineteen twenties buying up the estates of socialites. He
Speaker 3: would redesign the pieces into more modern styles, which showed
Speaker 3: off his skill at jewelry design. He built himself into
Speaker 3: a brand and was known for the finest pieces. He
Speaker 3: actually owned the Hope Diamond for a while, and he
Speaker 3: donated it to the Smithsonian in nineteen fifty eight. Look
Speaker 3: at him, there it goes today. His jewels are particular
Speaker 3: favorites on the red carpet, and the store in Paris
Speaker 3: is impressive. Doesn't have display cases on the main floor,
Speaker 3: that would be gosh. They have little lounge areas where
Speaker 3: customers sit while the jewels are brought to them, and
Speaker 3: this allow for tighter security. It's covered with CCTV like
Speaker 3: a Vegas casino. There are microphones everywhere. When sales associates
Speaker 3: hand someone apiece or take it from the case, they
Speaker 3: very subtly state what they're doing. Would monsieur like to
Speaker 3: see this necklace, gigontique? I just took it from the
Speaker 3: display case in the cornell. I like to refer to
Speaker 3: this item as four seven eight fe D, but others
Speaker 3: call it the Star of Pawnee, gifted to the King
Speaker 3: of America by Little Sebastian in eighteen seventy two. So
Speaker 3: there you are, Zarin. You're just arriving at work.
Speaker 2: I'm my job.
Speaker 3: The streets of Paris are just waking up. People ride
Speaker 3: by on bikes, probably with bagattes. A man strolls by playing.
Speaker 2: An accordion ah.
Speaker 3: Parisians shuffle along, faces to the sun, cigarettes in hand.
Speaker 3: The security guard opens up the shop and lets you
Speaker 3: and your coworkers in. You are ready to sell incredibly
Speaker 3: priced gems to the rich and famous. What you don't
Speaker 3: know was that four members of the Pink Panthers were
Speaker 3: already inside. You settle in at your desk, rousing your
Speaker 3: computer screen awake, only to see the solitaire game you'd
Speaker 3: left open the night before. The sales staff wipe down
Speaker 3: the display cases and adjust a necklace or bracelet here
Speaker 3: and there. Suddenly you hear a commotion from upstairs. You
Speaker 3: hear the import export director scream. You leap to your feet.
Speaker 3: As you rush up the stairs, you're greeted by four
Speaker 3: large men, all with their faces and heads covered. They
Speaker 3: shove you towards the safe and tell you to open it.
Speaker 3: One has a gun to your head. You can't focus,
Speaker 3: You're a mess. Zarin numbers.
Speaker 2: I don't know numbers.
Speaker 3: So they call your assistant. She opens the safe.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: The men clear it out and they head for the
Speaker 3: display cases. With incredible quickness, they scoop up valuable pieces
Speaker 3: shove them into bags. One of the burglars yells to
Speaker 3: the rest that they're out of time, so they snatch
Speaker 3: the security videotapes, douse you and the rest of the staff.
Speaker 3: You tear gas and take off out the back door.
Speaker 3: Tear gas, tear gas. In all, they stole four hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty pieces worth thirty six million dollars.
Speaker 2: They're very good at their job.
Speaker 3: None of it has ever been recovered. Thirty six million.
Speaker 3: Attorney General Pascal Furet was quoted in Vanity Fair as
Speaker 3: saying of the heist quote Harry Winston was what we
Speaker 3: call a coupe des clap, a stunning coup, very rare,
Speaker 3: said Fulet, his right eye closing for a few beats,
Speaker 3: A high spectrum armed robbery that could only been executed
Speaker 3: by serious individuals that quote the top of the heap,
Speaker 3: as your Sinatra would say of grand banditry.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I like better? Is the Sinatra
Speaker 2: analogy of like a Sinatra comparison exactly, or like the
Speaker 2: fact he's got one eye blinking with truth.
Speaker 3: So we have this devastating robbery at Harry Winston that
Speaker 3: it could only get worse. Oh yeah, when we come
Speaker 3: back from this.
Speaker 4: Break, I'll tell you all about it.
Speaker 2: What's ups Aaron, No, not much as it's sitting here
Speaker 2: during the break. And I had a question though, because
Speaker 2: I was thinking about this all during those delicious commercials
Speaker 2: So good. You said they got thirty six million jewelry,
Speaker 2: and you said that they had the fences like in
Speaker 2: Antwerp and in Israel. But is that, like, how do
Speaker 2: you get that? What do you do with that thirty
Speaker 2: six million dollar? Julie? Once you've walked out of the store.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they tell I'm not asking this because I
Speaker 2: plan to do anything. I'm just asking theoretically.
Speaker 3: I'm assuming I'm curious. They take the gems, they hand
Speaker 3: them off to the courier. The courier gets them across
Speaker 3: the border and gets them, let's say, to Antwerp and Antwerp.
Speaker 3: It's divided up most likely between a couple of these fences.
Speaker 3: They recut the gems, they re they melt down the
Speaker 3: gold or the platinum and they kind of reconfigure it
Speaker 3: into new pieces.
Speaker 2: So they kind of do it Harry Winston did with
Speaker 2: the old.
Speaker 3: Jewels precisely, precisely, and then off it goes around the world.
Speaker 3: There actually there was one stone that was traced around.
Speaker 3: They had like figured out where it was stolen by
Speaker 3: the pink panthers and bounced around the globe, and the
Speaker 3: last place that was known to be was on the
Speaker 3: finger of Vladimir Putin's galpal.
Speaker 2: That's fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's super fun.
Speaker 2: And it landed on the finger of Vladimir PuO.
Speaker 3: So October sixth, two thousand and seven, the pink Panthers,
Speaker 3: they stole thirty six million in jewels from the Harry
Speaker 3: Winston store in Paris. You remember that you were there.
Speaker 2: Sarin, I'm still shaking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, December fourth, two thousand and eight. So oh, you know,
Speaker 3: a little more than a year later, they struck again,
Speaker 3: this time also in Paris, this time also at the
Speaker 3: Harry Winston store.
Speaker 2: Like you guys had good stuff, like.
Speaker 3: It worked the first time. So it's after five o'clock.
Speaker 3: Four dudes, big old serbs, walking down the street. They're
Speaker 3: pulling a suitcase behind in them like a little roller suitcase,
Speaker 3: like they're a flight attendant. They're dresses women, I should
Speaker 3: add that in oh okay, and not convincingly, so like
Speaker 3: they have really long blonde wigs and spike heels on, so.
Speaker 2: Like when like when detectives on TV, or are they
Speaker 2: gonna have to like walk in the park as a
Speaker 2: woman so they can get like attacked by the questions,
Speaker 2: look like.
Speaker 3: It's Jerry in Drag Jerry or back and drag. Okay,
Speaker 3: so they're not convincing. They walk by the Cartier store.
Speaker 3: A salesperson there looks out and is like those are
Speaker 3: some suspicious characters, and watches as they go towards Harry Winston.
Speaker 3: Someone at the Louis Vuitton store also saw them and
Speaker 3: thought theyir a big body and crazy get ups were
Speaker 3: a little out of place, so they told security and
Speaker 3: then everyone's kind of watching as they they go up
Speaker 3: to the Harry Winston door and you have to get
Speaker 3: buzzed in. They get buzzed in, They're like, well, they
Speaker 3: must must have been vetted, and they go the vetting
Speaker 3: process at Harry Winston was basically glancing at him and
Speaker 3: then buzzing him in.
Speaker 2: I was wondering, do you.
Speaker 3: Think they'd be a little more security minded with their
Speaker 3: history like Vitan over there doing the all see something,
Speaker 3: say something, not in free wheeling Harry Winston. Maybe they're
Speaker 3: just trying to be more accommodating and non judgmental.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's probably why.
Speaker 3: Well that's probably not. Uh so whatever. Last time the
Speaker 3: thieves were hiding inside the store. This time they're coming
Speaker 3: in through the front door during business hours. They're welcomed
Speaker 3: in and taking upstairs, but halfway up the stairs they strike.
Speaker 3: They whip out guns, they pull out a hand grenade,
Speaker 3: and they're yelling in these really thick slavic accents, nobody
Speaker 3: move or I will smoke you all. And then like
Speaker 3: a seventies cartoon hippie hanging on the corner, says cool man,
Speaker 3: Like they have cartoons, they're living cartoons living. You have
Speaker 3: no idea how the rich lives.
Speaker 2: No, I really don't. I hear things. I hear things.
Speaker 3: And so they start plundering the store. They popped open
Speaker 3: that roller bag and started just filling it with goods. Weirdly,
Speaker 3: they knew all the employees' names and home addresses. They're like,
Speaker 3: you there a Tienn who lives at three ninety eight
Speaker 3: Rue Barney Miller Kill on the floor. And weirdly, they
Speaker 3: also knew that there was a secret compartment in the safe.
Speaker 2: That has to be so unnerving for the employees.
Speaker 3: Maybe terrifying. They knew about the secret compartment in the safe,
Speaker 3: and they also knew that the secret compartment held a
Speaker 3: piece that was delivered the day before. Wow, it was
Speaker 3: a thirty one carrot diamond ring.
Speaker 2: So did they mic the place when they went through
Speaker 2: the first day?
Speaker 3: Shall see? So this ring eight million dollars. It was
Speaker 3: called Legros Pierre, the big Stone, the Big Peter, Big Peter, Yes,
Speaker 3: big gross Peter. They grabbed it up, okay, you know,
Speaker 3: just like stuck it.
Speaker 2: They got their hands on the big pan and got the.
Speaker 3: Big Peter and I'm shoving it down my pants. In
Speaker 3: twenty minutes, they grabbed over four hundred pieces. Wow, worth
Speaker 3: seventy three point three million dollars.
Speaker 2: You know what, I'm trying to get their dam in
Speaker 2: the wrong business, like stop.
Speaker 3: Seventy three point three million dollars.
Speaker 2: That's multiple lifetimes of money for most people I know.
Speaker 3: And they're like, I have a lot of problems here.
Speaker 3: I have a problem with the fact that there's like
Speaker 3: seventy three point three million dollars worth of jewels in
Speaker 3: this store.
Speaker 2: Store, Like anyway, you need to practice being rich. You're
Speaker 2: having a lot of shock at some of the most
Speaker 2: entry level things. And I'm behind you, I admit, But so.
Speaker 3: Four hundred pieces then they're gone. This was to be
Speaker 3: known as La case des the break In of the Century.
Speaker 3: As the French police and Lloyd's of London the underwriter,
Speaker 3: they were following all leads. They put ads in everyday
Speaker 3: papers in the immigrant suburbs, and they offered a one
Speaker 3: million dollar reward.
Speaker 2: So they're just basically fishing for snitches pretty much.
Speaker 3: And they started getting tips. Well, they got crazy ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, blah blah blah. A lot of them, My brother Steve.
Speaker 3: I don't like the looks of them. A lot of
Speaker 3: the more garbage, but a couple panned out. Their investigation
Speaker 3: highlighted a real problem for Harry Winston. That security guard,
Speaker 3: the one who let the guys in Dragon Yeah, Malud jinad.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, Malud Malud.
Speaker 3: He wasn't in the store for the first robbery, but
Speaker 3: he'd been the one to lock up the night before.
Speaker 3: Oh coincidence when the team that's when they came in, right.
Speaker 3: They had CCTV footage of him strolling around the store
Speaker 3: during the second hit while his coworkers were tied up.
Speaker 2: So he's the only one who's not.
Speaker 3: Only one not tied up. And Malud had been living
Speaker 3: it up since the robbery. He and his girlfriend they
Speaker 3: took this expensive seaside vacation. They paid in cash all
Speaker 3: my dude, Malud and the police were able to connect
Speaker 3: the security guard with another guy, who then connected to
Speaker 3: another guy who connected to the heist team. Okay, members
Speaker 3: of the crew had been taking really pricey vacations themselves,
Speaker 3: like twelve thousand euro trips. They were leasing supercars with
Speaker 3: cash deposits.
Speaker 2: De Niro and goodfellows would be pissed.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, In all, eight people were arrested and tried
Speaker 3: for the robbery. The supposed ring leader did do ya
Speaker 3: yawee mm hmm. He claimed that he was just a
Speaker 3: good between with the Pink Panther who was the brains
Speaker 3: of the operation. But when they raided his place they
Speaker 3: found a good number of the pieces from the second
Speaker 3: Harry Winston heist.
Speaker 2: I'm just lucky that way.
Speaker 3: They found eight hundred thousand euros and a Yugoslavian RBM
Speaker 3: eighty rocket launcher.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: You know what else? They found the big Peter oh
Speaker 3: rest Pierre Where Peter right there? It was hidden in
Speaker 3: a jar of face cream.
Speaker 2: Yes, I like a good callback.
Speaker 3: A good callback. Of course. This was in no way
Speaker 3: the end for the Pink Panthers.
Speaker 2: No rocking.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: August two thousand and nine, they hit the Graft store
Speaker 3: in London again.
Speaker 2: Gotta go back with your hits play the favorites.
Speaker 3: Forty three pieces worth forty million pounds were taken. This
Speaker 3: is the money.
Speaker 2: This just digger around. Yeah, I mean it's like you
Speaker 2: can't really comprehend.
Speaker 3: And how like how did they get insured? Again? That's
Speaker 3: my question. Anyway, everything was eventually recovered and two people
Speaker 3: were arrested for that one. In twenty eighteen, they hit
Speaker 3: the Doge's Palace in Venice, Italy.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Christie's was having an exhibition called Treasures of the Moughles
Speaker 3: and Maharages.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of sapphires and rubies.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They took two million dollars in gems that belonged
Speaker 3: to a member of the Katari royal family. Yeah, stones
Speaker 3: on them. Yeah, that's high. That same year, they stole
Speaker 3: gems belonging to the Swedish monarchy from a cathedral.
Speaker 2: So they're just like hitting up the royalists.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, No, they took an elaborate tiara from a
Speaker 3: British manor house.
Speaker 2: Like who has jewels?
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right. In June of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: they broke into a Dutch art fair and tried to
Speaker 3: steal a diamond and sapphire earring set worth more than
Speaker 3: ten million dollars.
Speaker 2: Were they just walking by and sow it and got excited?
Speaker 2: I guess what's going on?
Speaker 3: Grad They were unsuccessful and they fled the scene, but
Speaker 3: they were captured by police. I feel like they're getting
Speaker 3: sloppier over time.
Speaker 2: It feels like it's impromptu. I was joking before, but
Speaker 2: it does feel like.
Speaker 3: Well, and I think as they get further and further
Speaker 3: away from the horrors of the Balkan Wars, they get softer.
Speaker 3: Oh you know, and I don't I think that at
Speaker 3: this point we're twenty years out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so now you have a different culture. Never exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they're starting to rest on their laurels.
Speaker 3: They're getting successful, right, Well, hundreds have been arrested since
Speaker 3: two thousand and one. Hundreds. There are always hundreds more
Speaker 3: to take their place. That's why the eight hundred figure.
Speaker 2: Doesn't they hiring?
Speaker 3: Can I send Yeah, send them a they want a
Speaker 3: head shot, I'll.
Speaker 2: Give them Mercedes to help me with the Serbian come on.
Speaker 3: In his article in The New Yorker, David Samuel spoke
Speaker 3: with one of the founding members of the Pink Panthers,
Speaker 3: Pavel Punch Stana Morovitch. Punch Morovich, Punch Morovich, Oh.
Speaker 2: Punch Stana Morovitch. Okay, but his nickname is Punch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because he was a safe breaker, not because he
Speaker 3: punched people. But he would like he used that cattle
Speaker 3: thing Yeah, him in the head.
Speaker 2: And the cattle.
Speaker 3: What's the movie?
Speaker 2: Uh, no Country for old Man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the friend O Rod, Friend Rod, he used that
Speaker 3: to break the safe. So he called himself a gem
Speaker 3: heist mastermind, and he said he was tired and willing
Speaker 3: to talk with a friend though, Rod.
Speaker 2: Can I bring my friend?
Speaker 3: This is what he said quote, there's no head, there's
Speaker 3: no end, there's no tail, there's no beginning. You're talking
Speaker 3: to the it. You're talking to the highest of the highest.
Speaker 3: You're talking to Oz, the man behind the mirror. It's me,
Speaker 3: he says. What I did, I was the best.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, Punch, Punch.
Speaker 3: So there is a quote for him that really stood
Speaker 3: out to me though, all right, hit me with it.
Speaker 3: The truth is, says Punch, some Pink Panther members don't
Speaker 3: even know they're in the Pink Panthers. Isn't that incredible?
Speaker 3: You think I'm on this local team. Oh guess who
Speaker 3: you're working for?
Speaker 2: I got someday for your son.
Speaker 3: If there's a serb on your team, Yeah, you're working
Speaker 3: for So what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2: Apparently I've been working for the Pink Panthers because I
Speaker 2: was working work with this I did, and he was
Speaker 2: very successful. We were very successful. I'm thinking I might
Speaker 2: have been helping them.
Speaker 3: It could be.
Speaker 2: So I'm really stokedn't even know I was a member
Speaker 2: of organized crime. Put them look at me. You learn
Speaker 2: something new every day? What about you?
Speaker 3: Organized painting crime?
Speaker 2: Exactly?
Speaker 3: That's it. My takeaway is, I can't get my head
Speaker 3: around these numbers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm right there with you.
Speaker 3: Thirty million, seventy four million, Like this is ridiculous.
Speaker 2: I mean, like one of my Bobby Benia's agent, like
Speaker 2: working on a contract, who comes up with these numbers.
Speaker 3: Ah. I want that money, but I don't want to
Speaker 3: do the crime. That's it. That's all I have. One.
Speaker 3: You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime on both
Speaker 3: Twitter and Instagram. Email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail
Speaker 3: dot com. Leave a talkback on the iHeart app please. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I love those things. It's thirty second voice anonymous voicemail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, drop some.
Speaker 3: Just do it. Tune in next time. Ridiculous Crime is
Speaker 3: hosted by Elizabeth Dutton's Aaron Burnett, produced and edited by
Speaker 3: Big Dog Diamond Dave. Research is by Tope Tiger, Marissa
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Speaker 3: Kuma Travis Dutton. Executive producers are Shark Trust, Cheetah, Ben
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