Five 'Pink Panthers' caught red-handed
Five members of the world’s most elusive gang of jewel thieves were arrested Friday — but nearly 800 others remain at large.
Dubbed the “Pink Panthers” by Interpol after a stolen diamond from a London heist was recovered in tub of face cream — the same hiding place used by a thief in the 1975 crime comedy, “The Return of the Pink Panther” — the network had become so unstoppable that investigators from 22 countries met annually to compare notes.
On Friday, five crooks trying to make a smooth getaway in Barcelona were nabbed in one of the city’s upscale shopping areas after they snagged $443,000 worth of jewels in less than a minute, cops said.
The arrests came after German authorities tipped off police in Spain to the movements of the thieves.
The Pink Panthers have their roots in the former Yugoslavia, growing out of the war-torn country to conduct more than 380 robberies between 1999 and 2015, according to Interpol.
They’ve smashed an Audi into the glass doors of a mall in Dubai; escaped on bicycles from Tokyo cops; and used a speedboat in St. Tropez to make a getaway, according to a published report.
Their haul so far? Roughly $370 million, authorities say. In 2003, three men in expensive suits and wigs rolled up to London’s Graff Diamonds and talked the guards into opening the doors for them.
Once inside, one of the thieves pulled out a Magnum .357.
It took three minutes to clear the shop of 47 pieces of jewelry worth roughly $30 million.
One of the Graff Diamonds thieves was later arrested in France, where police discovered his girlfriend had stashed a $653,000 blue sparkler in her face cream jar.
When members do get arrested, they don’t always stay behind bars. In 2013, three busted out of jail in Switzerland in separate incidents. Two of the thieves were able to escape after accomplices drove a pickup truck into the side gate of the prison complex, put ladders over a barbed wire fence and laid down rifle fire to keep the prison guards at bay. In December they targeted Ivan Petric, Croatia’s ambassador to Montenegro, by staking out her building for a week before swooping into her home to get their haul. Petric’s jewels were found later in an apartment rented by selfproclaimed founding gang member Rakjo Causevic. He told reporters the Pink Panthers were a civilized gang that never engaged in violence. “Pink Panther is a system. We created a system. We were never violent. I am a thief, but a gentleman,” he said.