The New Pink Panther Gang

Interpol An arrest in Paris may crack an international crime ring behind dozens of spectacular jewelry heists. Eric Pape tracks down the real-life thieves more audacious than any in film.

In a seedy Paris neighborhood famous for the Moulin Rouge, strip clubs, and British pubs, you might not expect to find a pair of flamboyant multimillion-dollar jewel thieves in a nondescript hotel. But, as any fan of the Pink Panther films knows—and as police around the world are learning—jewel thieves are full of surprises.

The two men arrested in Pigalle Monday could certainly have afforded better digs if, as police suspect, they are big fish in an international burglary ring that has taken its moniker from the films: The Pink Panthers. Less than a week earlier, the two allegedly walked out of L’Emeraude bijouterie in Lausanne, Switzerland, with $2 million in luxury watches.

Police believe the four busty ladies, who entered Harry Winston’s in Paris drew out a Magnum and a grenade and made off with an astounding $100 million in jewelry, were Panthers in drag.

One of them, Zoran Kostic, is thought to be among "the godfathers of the Pinks,” according to French police. He and his Croatian collaborator, Nicolai Ivanovic, are the subject of numerous international arrest warrants, including one for a large jewelry store robbery in Monaco in 2007.

Overall, the Pink Panthers gang, 200-or-so-strong and made up largely of former military men from the Balkans, is believed to have staged more than 120 heists in at least 30 countries over the past decade. The estimated total haul: around $200 million, which is the kind of money that usually merits a room at the Ritz or the George V.

Scotland Yard dubbed the gang “the Pink Panthers” after discovering a stolen blue-diamond ring worth about $750,000 in a jar of skin cream in the possession of one of the thieves, echoing a scene in a Blake Edwards film. The Panthers don’t merely echo films, like The Thomas Crown Affair, they improve on them. As a French investigator explained it to Agence-France Press, the Panthers’ modus operandi is "ballsy, and meticulously prepared.”

Their signature is the audacious, tightly choreographed lightning-strike robbery. In 2005, Panthers in St. Tropez on the Côte d'Azur dressed in loud tourist T-shirts, hit a store near the waterfront, then strolled through the tourist-thronged streets—impassable to cars—to a waiting speedboat. In other well-planned getaways, they’ve used bicycles and even skis.

Their £23 million  “Crime of the Century” in London in 2003 fascinated the U.K., in part because the criminals walked by countless surveillance cameras after grabbing the loot without bothering to cover their faces. (A few were detained in that case, including the man with the diamond ring in a jar of cream. Others got away.) In another U.K. heist, in 2007, they drove up in a chauffered Bentley Continental Flying Spur and pretended to be wealthy enough for the prestigious diamond seller Graff to treat them like valued customers—until one thief whipped out a Magnum.

In Tokyo, they appeared to be average businessmen bicycling to work in hygienic facemasks—until they tear-gassed jewelry staff and walked out with a million-dollar bootie.

The most ostentatious robbery might have involved the four busty ladies who entered Harry Winston’s in Paris, drew out a Magnum and a grenade, and made off with an astounding $100 million jewel cache in December 2008. The police believe the perps were Panthers in drag.