The Daring Heists Of The Elusive Pink Panthers

[Music] this week on buzzfeed unsolved we brought through a web of heists and robberies that have been ongoing for 25 years most recently in 2018 the pink panther network of jewel thieves is that why you wore this little shirt i respect it it's pretty good right that's some fun flair you're still having fun even in 2020 let's hear about a little crime huh well not a little crime there's a whole lot of crime actually it's a fun thing that you brought that up because we are going to be doing things a little bit differently for this case it's a little bit of an unusual case for us in that we're not covering just a single case but a whole bunch of robberies so this is like a russian doll of crime yeah it's sort of like yeah yeah you keep opening it and you're going to get more and more surprises as you open it yeah i love it that being said let's dive in starting with the first case which in a twist for us is solved [Music] in may of 2003 the flagship store of luxury jewelry retailer graph in london was serving an eccentrically dressed customer named naboisha denik though his suit and umbrella may not have appeared unusual his awkward pompadour wig stood out as he examined a 12 carat ring valued at 450 000 the ring was apparently not quite what danique was looking for remarking that it was too glamorous then asking quote do you have a smaller one that's not what i'd be asking i'd be saying bigger baby is this all you guys got this uh little rinky dink shop of yours 450k so glamorous yeah for a man with a pompadour it's a pompadour wig too kind of defeats the purpose of a wig if everyone's like hey that's a weird wig i thought the whole point of a wig was that it was supposed to some people don't mind showing off a wig they they acknowledge that it's an accessory to be used lady gaga wears wigs people like her yeah but gotcha she's not pulling off a heist she could if she wanted to i just feel like if you're gonna commit a robbery don't wear something that's very obvious like yeah she had a weird wig on yeah yeah but while you're looking at the pompadour while you're going wow what a crazy pompadour i got my gun out what are you talking i'm throwing curve balls at you yeah but they're still going to be able to get over here i got those little puppets that you get on fourth of july i'm throwing those at the ground over here i got a crazy pop door wig meanwhile i'm just taking money off the cash register and you're going what a crazy looking guy before a more subtle piece could be offered denise whipped out a chrome-plated 357 magnum and told everyone to get on the floor at the same time a montenegrin man in his late twenties named pradrag vujosevich entered the store and used a hammer to smash open display cases and remove 47 pieces of diamond jewelry that's it distraction gone what if just got you see that's the thing that's how it works what if you just didn't do a distraction you just walked in and just started the heist where's the flare for the dramatic you walk and go hi everybody i got a gun i'm here to rob you how about i go in with the razzle dazzle and then you can hop in as mr hammer what kind of hammer are you picturing here i was picturing like mulnir like thor's hammer for some reason i wasn't picturing like a home depot hammer a little don't break the ice hammer well you were all about the razzle dazzle what happened you're not though apparently apparently i'm mr razzle dazzle i mean okay you're dressed that's true look at that long flowy hair you want why don't you want to give us a little yeah there we go i'm here to rob you now with 23 million pounds of jewelry the two men fled the scene simon stearman a security guard gave chase and managed to subdue danique by sitting on him steerman reportedly removed denik's wig and began berating him for it telling the thief how dumb he looked rude hey man that's a security guard who's going above and beyond the call of duty there sitting on someone is not cool it's actually very funny just imagining the person underneath being like no no no no no he's the thief sheen i'm just trying to figure out why you're not thrilled by a security guard who usually will see something happening because i'm rooting for the thieves are you not i just think it's funny to sit on somebody it's a funny way to subdue someone not doing any kind of like mma moves just the old you ain't going nowhere within days scotland yard identified another accomplice in charge of the burglars travel arrangements one milan jovetic detectives obtained a warrant to search the apartment where yovitich was staying with his girlfriend anastankovitch stankovich it smells like stankopitch has been here the search turned up two fake italian passports with no names or photos and a particular jar of face cream in the cream was a blue diamond ring worth upwards of three quarters of a million dollars the press referred to the robbers as the pink panthers as a similar hiding spot was used in the 1975 comedy the return of the pink panther what do you think about them hiding a ring in face cream seems kind of risky though yeah a little risky i don't like dipping my hands into cream so i don't think i would do that well there's no need to lie here we all know that you're obsessed with having lubricated hands your hands need to be soft and moist my hands are naturally soft you would think they were constantly lubricated but yes they're like a baby are you turning yourself on and i've done a lot of hard work in my life but you wouldn't know it it's like a silk like wet silk while the blue ring had been found more than 22 million pounds of jewelry was still missing along with vujocevic scotland yard detective steve alexander tracked phone records to an apartment in paris thought to be vujosevich's home but bujo savage was gone while in paris alexander met up with a special police unit called the brigade for the repression of banditry to compare notes banditry is a fun word to say it's a cool name front to back what if you named your band opposed to [ __ ] it's banditry like a music band banditry and you named yourself banditry and you went on stage with like bandanas over your face or like the like the jabba well i feel like you would just call yourselves the bandits yeah but that's got to be a band out there that exists but that's like that's mainstream [ __ ] banditry so you want to show up like the hamburglar out there with a little guitar where the bandits it turned out the graph robbery in london wasn't the first time fujo savage was suspected of robbing a jewelry store in fact it wasn't even the first craft store he'd targeted vujocevic was wanted for robbing a craft store in amsterdam a castiglione in paris as well as jewelers in frankfurt geneva and barcelona this guy's doing a bit of a euro trip here he's bouncing all about what is he on a gap year in 2005 vujo savage was caught trying to cross into france from italy via car when alexander traveled to paris to question vujocevic however he refused to talk about the london robbery according to his mother vujo savage was sentenced to nine years in prison but the missing diamonds were nowhere to be found i say if you can't find the rocks ain't nobody doing time so if you can't find the body the murderer's not wear the rocks bro that's right i'm free yeah i murdered her but you can't find her body take the cuffs off also i'm not convinced that that's his mom this is a this is a network of thieves that have already proven they love disguises that could be just his buddy over there in a wig with like old lady makeup on like yeah i think he's he was in jail for nine years i think you did that prison over there and just trails off people can i get you gentlemen some how you say tea she stubs her foot on like a chair and goes ah i mean oh [ __ ] while the london graph heist was the crime that gave the pink panthers their name it was far from the only one and in no way encompassed the full roster of the group according to jeweler magazine as of 2019 they'd stolen nearly 1 billion dollars worth of goods across 35 countries let's look at a small sampling of their work in 2001 a group robbed a jewelry store in the coastal town of biaritz france speaking to their thoroughness for planning jobs to deter any possible witnesses prior to the heist the men painted a bench outside the store so no one would happen to sit there with a front row seat of the heist in 2002 a group stalled the millennium necklace worth one million dollars from the venetian casino in las vegas a millennium necklace that sounds i told you this is an impressive list of things they have stolen that sounds good one million dollars for a necklace and it's called the millennium necklace you're asking for it right if you call it the millennium necklace call it the dog [ __ ] diamond no one's stealing that in 2003 another group of panthers made off with 14 million dollars of jewels from chopar in paris in march 2004 two serbian men in wigs stole the contesta vendome necklace which featured a 125 carat diamond from a store in tokyo in saint tropez in 2005 a group of panthers in wigs and flower print shirts robbed a jewelry store and escaped via a wading speedboat also in 2005 a group in amsterdam dressed as airport workers transferred 75 million euros of jewelry to a waiting plane in 2007 the pink panthers robbed the harry winston boutique in paris with guns the next year they robbed the same store dressed as women combined the two thefts resulted in 76 million pounds of lost jewelry they sure do love their wigs in this group a wig heavy crew if i were hiring robbers and i was like this big boss and i was looking through resumes this one's jumping out from the pile now oh big time it makes me wish that more teams like this could assemble and we could follow them like sports yeah like stats like fantasy robbery or something yeah yeah indeed it seems the panthers have no qualms whatsoever about targeting a store they've already robbed in 2009 they stole 43 pieces worth 40 million pounds from the same graph store in london that they hit in 2003 the heist that gave them their name what do you think about robbing the same store twice i think it's very funny kind of a fool me once thing right i think it's very funny do you think at that point it's on the store oh yeah like you didn't learn your lesson the first time maybe up the security bench again oh darn it while jewelry has been a specialty of the pink panthers it is not the only luxury item they've targeted in 2008 the group pulled off the largest art heist in european history stealing a monet a van gogh a degas and a cezanne in total valued at over 145 million from a gallery in zurich with so many big money heists to choose from some theorize the collective's most infamous robbery took place in 2016 stealing an estimated 5.6 million dollars worth of jewelry in paris from one kimberley kardashian including her 20-carat diamond engagement ring from kanye west they weren't the ones who were like violent with her right i think they were oh i can't support them then then never mind i rescind they're mean to her these are bad people they're criminals well but some criminals are fun and i thought they were fun criminals they have guns what did you think was inside the gun silly putty all right give me all your jewels okay i don't support these criminals anymore nerf balls or due respect to their um sense of whimsy when it comes to wigs i say that it's only theorized that the pink panthers held up kim kardashian because frankly despite their long list of crimes of which we've only discussed a few not much is known about the group who their leaders are where they take the jewels how they've organized even how many people are in the group are all unknown here's what i would do if they rob me i'd say where do you take the jewels and then it'd be a fun hot little tip for the newspaper they'd be like well i asked them you're just going to be like they put them in a desk somewhere yeah yeah take it but where are you taking yeah go on take it by the way where do you take the jewels i mean get me a little something on the back end here so i could sell this to the papers even the name the pink panthers is a moniker given to them by the media not the group itself whenever a crime is committed if it sounds like someone fitting a description of a pink panther it's chalked up to the pp posse a name i've coined for the group just now it's a pee pee posse that's funny you don't like that maybe possibly i love it peepee posse if i was named the pp posse i'd be pretty pissed off well there's no shortage of detectives and police agencies working to track them down as we've mentioned there's not much confirmed information about the group one belgian detective andre notre dame believes the panther operation is made up of 20 to 30 experienced thieves along with dozens of facilitators in cities throughout europe providing logistical assistance such as obtaining hotel rooms cars and weapons it does seem to be that the group employs the same strategy in many cases one they used at 152 different jewelry stores between 2002 and 2010. one well-dressed man enters the store propping open the security door other associates follow through the propped door and using hammers and pickaxes break open display cases and stuff the jewelry into backpacks they then leave in an older model often stolen car you would think that a group of very experienced thieves would have some kind of elaborate scheme that they employ every place they go and it's like now we're just going to walk in and smash your [ __ ] up with hammers the nature of this group i think speaks to the idea that maybe they're doing it for love of the game this sounds like it's the most proficient capable thieves in all of europe just banding together to be like let's have a little fun up there were you not expecting more like the shimmy down the the air duct and then yeah repel down like tom cruise and mission impossible i mean but they're clearly capable of more because they did a vegas heist they stole some art yeah but it just boils down to somebody walking in first going look at me and then everyone looks at them and then people go behind him and smash it effectively that was effective it's not very inventive but it works god damn it if it's not effective when that strategy won't do the panthers will occasionally use a tactic known as vo obelier which is basically smashing a storefront window for easy entry and exit of the store in 2007 and you can find full footage of this elsewhere on youtube the panthers drove two audis through the doors of the waffy mall in dubai and then into the doors of the graft's door three masked men ran into the store grabbed 3.4 million in jewelry and escaped in the getaway cars while their strategies are brazen and what jewel heists aren't they are not flawless in the dubai graph heist dna evidence left in the audis connecting the robbers to a previous job in liechtenstein as well as a cell number used to rent those audis led to police identifying eight panthers they rented the audis and gave their their numbers not great well you would think that if you're gonna rent a getaway car you wouldn't use your personal sale yeah steal it just steal a car use a burner how hard is it to seal a car how hard is it to get a pre-paid cell phone if you're stealing the millennium diamond you can't steal a toyota we don't steal small-scale [ __ ] that's small potatoes love cars we only steal [ __ ] diamonds we'll rent the audi also we're gonna use my cell phone because i have minutes in october of 2008 one of those men bosnian dusko drove a rented audi into monaco with a serbian man borko ilencik the two men parked and headed towards a sierra belly store a store that had already been robbed by the panthers in 2007. as they were crossing the street a car suddenly hit paoznin po oznin and elencik reluctantly went to the hospital where monaco police arrived and arrested the men do you buy the fact that a car accidentally hit one of these guys that were robbing a store or do you think a cop saw them was just like yeah it's fishy it's fishy it's fishy i mean the cops get frustrated after a while the cat and mouse game could get to your head yeah these guys keep crushing us with their cars why don't we actually crush them with a car while many panthers have been arrested the pressure to give up information has not resulted in any knowledge surrounding any sort of higher organization of the group because of this it's rumored that the panthers are actually a loose group of serbians montenegrins bosnians and other former yugoslavians orders for targets may filter down from some unknown higher level but many panthers do not appear to know one another and there may not be an actual leader do you think they meet with like hoods do you think they meet in a location with like all of their identities hidden with like their faces shadow you know as sort of like a secret society maybe but i'm interested do you actually think that there is no leader i could believe that i could believe that yes i think that or maybe it's just like a like a facebook group and they're like hey could be like one day a guy started the group was like you guys like diamonds i like diamonds and then some other guys like yeah i like diamonds i mean facebook's full of illegal activities and then so you post like him robbing a place and another guy's like hey i could do that too that's mine there like for a group that most considered to be loose knit however there still seems to be quite a bit of camaraderie amongst members including daring attempts to break one another out of jail in 2003 a serbian named dragon mikich one of the panthers who in 2001 painted the bench outside the jewelry store he was robbing to deter witnesses was arrested the day after stealing from a jewelry store in courchevel france in jail local prosecutor gilbert lafayette noticed how unintimidated mikich seemed to be saying quote these guys don't care about being put into jail they know they are going to escape end quote later that year mikich made his first attempt breaking away from guards after a hearing and running across a highway mikitch was shot in the leg and sent to a more secure prison in vio france sir son that prison however apparently turned out to be not secure enough one day an associate was able to toss wire cutters in a ladder over the prison wall so mikic could escape while another man fired 8k rounds at the guards for cover mikich was never recaptured how the [ __ ] do you walk up to a prison with a ladder and not have anybody in the tower being like hey there's a guy walking up to the wall right now with a ladder maybe we should do oh [ __ ] oh he's getting old he's gone you know the big spotlight probably wasn't on him oh yeah like a video game and the guy in the ladder is like oh [ __ ] then in july 2013 another panther milan popo ridge was serving a six six-year sentence in switzerland for a jewel heist in 2009. during an exercise period a van rammed open the gate of the prison smashing between the gate and the inside yard under a hail of ak-47 fire paparic along with another prisoner used a ladder provided by their accomplices to get over the prison fence the prisoners and the two men in the van set the van on fire and got in a secondary vehicle and took off at high speed papa rich was the third panther to escape swiss prison in three months the other two escaped guamirme prison near lausanne in may after an accomplice threw a sack over the prison wall containing escape equipment and a gun a sack just throw a sack over the wall that's funny it's starting to make me wonder that they should maybe have a little more security outside these walls that people are just tossing various escape paraphernalia maybe they don't care would you break me out of prison if i got a no i got arrested i mean you don't have to answer it that fast oh sorry would you i'll ask you again take a longer pause oh no it's not the the amount of time man if i got into prison would you you son of a [ __ ] with members breaking one another out of prison it seems there must be something more than a loose affiliation keeping the panthers together theories around what links the group center largely on a shared geographic and cultural history the countries of former yugoslavia especially serbia montenegro and bosnia and herzegovina the group with an interpol that focuses on the pink panthers is specifically charged with pursuing jewel thieves from the former yugoslavia for a little context criminal gangs rose to dominance in serbia during the balkan conflicts of the 1990s during this time many in the region developed an animosity towards the european union who they viewed as failing to halt the bloodshed and corruption that was ravaging the region while also denying immigration requests from belkin citizens essentially the former yugoslavians felt like none of the wealthy western europeans cared about their plight as a result it's possible to look at the heists through the lens of angry former yugoslavians who steal from western europe and theoretically bring the money back east the robin hood complex i thought you'd appreciate that i'm a big fan of punching up absolutely you could punch up go for it yeah punching down don't punch down in a 2010 article appearing in the new yorker about the panthers writer david samuels met with a serbian man who went by eugene who claimed to have knowledge of panther operations according to eugene quote they hate everybody they hate germany the vatican the usa their own governments they're junkies who hate you get a call from a guy you meet 10 other guys and you get paid some are cousins some are good friends all of them will be in prison in 5 or 10 years end quote would you heist with your pals wear a heist with five pals answer carefully you might hurt someone's feelings big time big time yeah i would i try i trust them with my life which ones ah i'm just thinking all my funny friends i miss them they're all in chicago you know nobody uh local that you would do a heist with um i'd probably heist with sarah yeah fine yeah yeah i mean i i wouldn't heist with you oh oh us heising yeah i'd pride heist with you i guess yeah it's too late i guess some of them were just acquaintances so you son of a [ __ ] how dare you despite their prolific portfolio of heists and hundreds of resulting arrests much about the pink panthers remains an enigma estimates for how many members they count in their ranks range from dozens not including facilitators eating them across europe to hundreds like most theories about the panthers this is impossible to verify who is in charge of the group and who orders the heists continues to be a mystery where stolen items are hidden or how they are laundered is largely unknown as well as if there exists any sort of pink panther headquarters what is known however is that the group is anything but inactive in 2018 alone in three separate heists the pink panthers stole approximately 2.3 million dollars worth of jewelry from a christie's exhibition in venice treasures from the swedish monarchy from a cathedral and a tiara from a british manor house so if you have a bunch of expensive jewelry stashed away someplace you might want to make sure it's secure because amongst the many mysteries surrounding the group one stands out where the pink panthers will strike next remains unsolved [Music] well they certainly are a zany roster of fellas pretty prolific look is stealing bad probably but that's who from that being said i don't have anything of value so you don't have to steal anything from a wha but if you do want to steal something mr moneybags over there don't steal from me steal his cat don't steal my [ __ ] cat if you're watching this pink panthers steal all of shane midday's left shoes and leave him only the right it'll drive him insane it's gonna be very funny if five serbian men walk into my apartment this weekend wearing wigs give us your cat and all of your left shoes and socks i got bergozzled burnt goozled once [Music] again you

Channel: BuzzFeed Unsolved Network

Views: 3,748,382

Rating: 4.9608788 out of 5

Keywords: BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed Unsolved, BuzzFeed Unsolved Network, Cold case, Creepy, Mini doc, Mystery, PL-Unsolved, PL-UnsolvedTrueCrime, PL-UnsolvedTrueCrime-S7, Ryan bergara, SffZ, Shane madej, The Daring Heists of The Elusive Pink Panthers, Unsolved, bizarre, buzzfeed unsolved network, cold case, investigation, mystery, ryan and shane, shane madej, theories, true crime, unexplained mysteries, unsolved, unsolved mysteries, unsolved mystery, unsolved network, unsolved true crime

Id: HZryl5nJr00

Length: 26min 1sec (1561 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 23 2020

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