Detective Clouseau would be proud: Spanish police made the first arrest of a much-wanted member of the infamous Pink Panther jewel thieves. Borko Ilincic, a 33-year-old Serbian, is wanted in dozens of countries where the gang has stolen gems that add up to an estimated $448 million. The Arab Emirates have first dibs in trying Ilincic for a life sentence for a heist seven years ago in Dubai.
The Pink Panthers have been operating for at least 30 years, and have been a major thorn in the side of Interpol (International Criminal Police Organization) for decades.Their iconic name comes from their 2003 heist in which a diamond ring was hidden in a jar of face cream—you know, like The Pink Panther movie in which a thief likewise hid jewels in this way. Talk about life imitating art.
But perhaps more interesting still, the group is also allegedly comprised of 200 ex-military personnel, mostly from the Balkans. That makes it the nexus of two of the largest criminal trends of the modern era: international crime organizations arising from Eastern Europe and soldiers gone bad.
Yes indeed, former members of Mexican special forces are behind some of the most violent drug cartels in that country, and there are even cases of the cartels using former U.S. soldiers as hitmen. A recent endeavor in Columbia to create a fleet of drug submarines used Columbian navy personnel, and mafia groups the world over often had connections to current or former military personnel.
In the past decade, Eastern Europe has found quite a niche in cyber crime and illegal trafficking (of goods, women, whatever they can get their hands on).
But unlike most of these groups, the Pink Panthers seems both relatively nonviolent (though some of the heists occurred under threat of weapons), and solely targets the uber rich. So cheers to the Pink Panthers: keepin' it as classy as a thieving, ex-military, Eastern European criminal network can be.
