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Hello! The time has finally come for us to present Exactly Right's first true crime limited series,
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Infamous International The Pink Panthers Story. This premiere episode is called The Heist at
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Wafi Mall and it walks you through one of the world's most audacious diamond heists that was
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pulled off in less than one minute. Join renowned journalists and eyewitnesses as they introduce
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you to The Pink Panthers, a band of Serbian jewel thieves who make international headlines and spark
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a worldwide manhunt. So enjoy this premiere episode of Infamous International, The Pink Panther Story.
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And then when you're done, go over to Infamous International, The Pink Panther Story
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on your podcast app and binge the second episode. Plus, you can see photos of the cast of characters
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and the heist they committed by going to Exactly Right on Instagram. And please don't forget
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to follow, rate, and review to show your support for our first limited true crime series.
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Yes, please. Follow Infamous International, The Pink Panther Story, wherever you get your podcasts.
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You can listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Goodbye. Goodbye. It's March 2007.
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The passengers arriving at Dubai International Airport are the typical mix for this bustling work-class city.
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Their locals returning home to the United Arab Emirates are business people from all over the world
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coming to meet with Dubai's rich elite. Tourists here to enjoy the parasailing, the luxury hotels,
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the conspicuous consumption that Dubai is famous for. And among them is a group of criminals
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with a particular taste for diamonds and high-end watches. They've come to Dubai to pull off one of the most spectacular heists ever attempted.
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They've traveled from Serbia in Eastern Europe. They're called the Pink Panthers.
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And this is their story. I'm Natalia Antalava. I'm a journalist based in Eastern Europe.
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And I'm going to take you into the world of Serbia's most brazen jewel thieves. The most daring and successful diamond thieves in the world.
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30 to 40 seconds, they're in, they're out. They've stolen half a billion dollars worth of valuables.
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Two well-dressed men strolled into an exclusive jewelry store in London and walked out with
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66 million dollars in jewels. They're called the Pink Panthers. They're a loosely connected crew of over-educated, underemployed, ambitious young people
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who rose from the ashes of the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s to commit elaborate smash-and-grab heists all across the globe, often in broad daylight.
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This is Infamous International, the Pink Panther story. Episode 1, Heist at the Wafi Mall.
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There are eight members of the Pink Panther's Dubai team, but at the center of it are three young thieves from the same hometown,
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the Serbian city of Nis. The mastermind and leader is a boyishly handsome 27-year-old, Mladen Lazarevic.
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His girlfriend, a stunning 26-year-old law school dropout, Bojan Amitic. and their best friend, Milan de Poya, 29, tall and suave with piercing green eyes.
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This is not the first time these three have worked together, but this is the turning point, the moment when Mladen, Poyana and Milan hit the world stage.
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Journalist Bradley Hope spent several years in the United Arab Emirates reporting for the Wall Street Journal.
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As he explains, the city of Dubai is the perfect location for the Panthers' most brazen heist to date.
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The locals are a minority in Dubai. A lot of people are coming in and out all the time.
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That airport is one of the busiest airports in the world. Not to mention they have a huge tourism flow as well.
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It's easy for anyone to blend in. In part, that's because so many people from around the world live there.
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There's tons of Afghans, especially the kind of wealthier ones. It's full of Russians, it's full of people from places like Angola that are seeking an easier lifestyle, even with all the money that they have.
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A city like Dubai, it has a really Wild West feel. When Bradley hopes that Dubai has a Wild West feel, he doesn't mean that it's a lawless place, more that it's full of shady characters.
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You know, there's fraudsters, there's money launderers, there's Asian drug lords, there's scammers.
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and there's really this feeling that Dubai is a place you can go for a second chance.
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You know, I remember there was a story about this guy. He used to be a top hairdresser in Beverly Hills,
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but he got arrested on felony charges of theft because he was stealing jewelry from all of his high-end clients.
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He went to prison and then when he got back out, he went to Dubai and basically set up the same job he used to have in Beverly Hills,
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but people didn't seem to care. But even with this undercurrent of criminality, Dubai is a place where robberies are rare.
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It's a city that's full of criminals, but there's not a lot of crime. The entire UAE is the kind of place where
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if you left your wallet on top of your car there a fairly good chance by the time you got back it still be there It really important to Dubai that people feel safe there that they feel like their money is safe
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that they can go shopping for super high-end stuff and safely bring it back to their hotel rooms and bring it back to their countries.
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Super high-end stuff is a big part of Dubai's economy. Conspicuous consumption is the thing.
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Businesses compete to offer the most opulent experiences, the very highest of the high end. Dubai is a place where billionaires fly in on private jets,
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shop for luxury brands, eat $800 ice cream sundaes and take a bath with 14-carat gold soap
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in hotels that charge five figures a night. It's where stores display some of their most
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valuable merchandise right on the sales floor, precious gems winking at shoppers from glass cases.
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It's also where world-famous diamond dealer Lawrence Graff has a flagship boutique.
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The aptly named Luxury Channel on YouTube ran this glowing profile. Lawrence Graff is one of the top names in the world of select jewellery.
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After half a century, he's made exclusive pieces for the wealth room, for kings and queens, and heads of state.
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I think history has proved that if you buy the best of anything, it's going to be a good investment.
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And incidentally, to buy the best, it's always the highest price. Lawrence Graff is not exaggerating.
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His stores do indeed carry some of the most expensive jewelry in the world. In 2015, CNBC Prime visited a Graff store in New York City
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to get a better idea of what kind of price tag we're talking about. In the room right now, one of the least expensive pieces is this ring.
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$2.8 million. That one, over 25 carats. Brace yourselves, we're only going up from here.
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Three and a half million for the necklace and the earrings. But this one-of-a-kind necklace seems affordable compared to this.
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It's the most expensive watch in the world. The watch with 110 extraordinary fancy colored diamonds.
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That watch is $55 million. $55 million for a single watch. That's an enticing object.
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if you're a belenair or a jewel thief. I first heard about the Pink Panthers about a decade ago
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from my friend and fellow journalist Ilan Greenberg. He is obsessed with them. Ilan and I co-founded an international news organization,
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CODA Story, several years ago. I had spent 15 years as a foreign correspondent for the BBC
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Ilan had been a staff writer at the Wall Street Journal and written investigative pieces for publications like GQ and the New York Times.
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But of all the pieces he has reported over the years, one that really stuck with me was the story about the Serbian jewel thieves.
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Now, I mentioned that this is not the first heist for Mladen Lazarevic, his girlfriend Bojan Amiteć, and their friend Milan Lipoja.
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No, they'd been practicing. The police had been investigating them, and they were wanted for a heist at a high-end jewelry store in Liechtenstein,
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along with another member of the Dubai team, Dusko Poznań, a handsome 29-year-old with dark hair and tired eyes.
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I asked Ilan about what this earlier heist says about the Pink Panther's style. Well, Natalia, it says a fair amount. I mean, there are a few things you see from the Liechtenstein job.
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First of all, what do they like to steal? They're very smart about it, about identifying the most valuable stuff.
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And that's diamonds, very expensive jewelry, and luxury watches. Right. And those are multimillion-dollar timepieces.
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Yeah. But even if they're not at that level, a Rolex or an Audemars Piguet can easily run a few hundred thousand dollars.
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Right. And what else? So this is the other thing that's really consistent about them.
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There's a lot of careful planning and then brute force. Lichtenstein, it's a smash and grab robbery, right?
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They come in, they neutralize the salespeople, threaten them, they wave a gun in their face,
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they figured out what they're after ahead of time. So they smash the cases with hammers and they grab the most valuable stuff and then they leave.
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So the other thing in Lichtenstein, they made sure they got in and out really fast.
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Bojana was waiting at the curb with the getaway car. Sounds like a pretty well-run operation.
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And tell me, does that become a blueprint for what they have planned in Dubai? Yeah, but there are some things about Dubai that are really different.
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Like the fact that for the most part, all the shopping that happens are in these massive indoor malls.
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Dubai, keep in mind, is a desert city. There aren't shops lining the streets. So you can't have a getaway car just waiting where you run out of a shop with loot and you drive off.
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As Alain says, Dubai presents some unique logistical challenges. And so the Big Panthers are specific about their choice of target.
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So Wafi Mall is one of the kind of older malls in Dubai, but very fancy still. Still has a lot of these kind of high-end jewelry shops.
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Journalist Bradley Hope again. It's located in the heart of the old city of Dubai.
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It's a very crowded area in a more dense part of the city. Right now, the city is full of these massive shopping malls,
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and all of them were the biggest shopping mall in the world until a new one just down the road was built.
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But Wafi Mall had this kind of slightly old-fashioned feel to it. The relatively low security compared to some of the more fancy high-end malls
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that had sprouted up, it made a perfect combination for this kind of smash robbery technique The target is set A graph boutique located inside the low Wafi Mall
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in the middle of the city. But they can't just carry all that loot back through the mall to the parking lot.
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No, they'll need to find a way to take the car to the jewels. Or maybe two cars.
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Serbian journalist Jelena Zoric is one of the leading experts on the Pink Panthers.
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She's more comfortable speaking Serbian, so you're hearing a translator. They had to picture in their heads exactly how everything is going to happen.
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The Panthers spent weeks getting familiar with the city and carefully studying their target.
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It was very risky and this is why they had to be very familiar with the area. They couldn't just show up to see the jeweler and say,
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OK, we like it here, this is how we're going to do it. They would come and rent an apartment and connect with other Serbians as well in Dubai
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because they had to know the city. First of all, they had to feel the pulse of the city.
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They had to feel the pulse of the mall. They make sure that they raise no suspicion at this stage of the operation.
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They manage the details carefully. It was a nice apartment, so they could fit in,
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they could look like regular tourists who were visiting Dubai. And also it was in a good spot, which was not too far away from the mall,
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so they had good access from there. Each member of the Pink Panthers team has a specific role to play.
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During this preparation phase, Bojana Mitic acted as a sort of a project manager.
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She was there for the logistics. She was there to connect everybody, to put everything in motion.
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She was using the credit cards. She is the one who pays for things. All the apartments they were renting, all the cars they were renting or they were buying.
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It's Bojana who visits the graph store multiple times. Dressed in expensive clothes, she blends right in with other shoppers,
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all while gathering intel. on the store's operations. As a young, good-looking girl,
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other people from the jewellery, they didn't suspect that they would do something.
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With Bujana's help, the Panthers identified the most valuable merchandise, which was worth 11 million euros.
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They studied the security system. They were aware of the fact that there were security cameras everywhere.
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And they determined the best time of day for the robbery, just before 10 p.m., right as the mall is closing.
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They were aware of the fact that it's very dangerous. And they didn't want to kill someone during this action
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because that was possible. If you come in the middle of the day with two cars in a shopping mall, that someone might end up as a victim.
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This is an important point. The Pink Panthers take every precaution to make sure that no one gets hurt
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or worse, killed during their heists. Because that's what gets you on the radar of Interpol,
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the international criminal police organization based in France. Interpol works with law enforcement in 194 countries
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to go after criminals who cross international borders. But they're generally focused on crimes that are more urgent than jewel heists.
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Interpol is not going to chase you that much if you are not a murderer. And that's why every time Pink Panthers were working,
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they were very careful not to harm anyone in their heists. that they were spectacular in the way they were doing it.
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They took a lot of money, definitely, but they would say, okay, we're not going to kill anyone,
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so yeah, we're not going to be that interesting to Interpol. Being interesting to Interpol can result in them issuing a red notice,
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an urgent bulletin Interpol sends out to law enforcement agencies all around the world.
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When that happens, you can be arrested and extradited from almost any country. So the Panthers decide to strike just before the Wafi Mall is set to close for the night.
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Fewer people in the mall, fewer people in harm's way. And after weeks of careful planning and preparation, the Panthers are ready.
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As the day of the robbery approaches, there is one last piece of the plan to be completed.
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The getaway cars. And the Pink Panthers have something quite specific in mind. Like the fancy apartment and Bojana's elegant clothes,
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the Panthers pay close attention to image. It's partly camouflage, but it's also theater.
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They steal a black Audi S8, a luxury sedan worth $100,000 plus. To blend in here, you need a high-end car.
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But they can only find one in Dubai, and their plan calls for two cars. So they drive 90 minutes to Abu Dhabi to steal a second S8.
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This is not a practical decision. They're planning to put on a show. So, on the evening of the heist, as the mall is preparing to close for the night,
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the black Audi backs up to the entrance doors. Soon, the white car pulls up directly in front of it.
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I asked Ilan to take me through the events in detail. So the first thing they do is they line up their cars in front of the mall.
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So they're nose to nose. And Bojana car she facing backwards And then Ilan car is in the opposite way He facing the mall the entrance of the mall And then they rev their engines and boom they take off exactly at the same time
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Footage from the mall security cameras captures the scene. The black Audi careening backward through the glass entrance doors
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across the ornate marble floor of the mall. Justice reporter Yelena Zorich said there are cameras everywhere.
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And so we can see this scene unfold from multiple angles. It's quite dramatic. Burjana Mitic is behind the wheel of the black Audi.
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She speeds backward down the mall corridor, right up to the jewelry store. They slam through the glass entrance of the mall.
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Then they head toward that graft store, that jewelry store, which is only a few hundred feet from the entrance.
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They want a lot of extra weight in the back. So they load up the trunks of the cars with cement blocks.
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It makes the cars like battering rams. It weaponizes the car. But tell me, why is Bojana going in reverse?
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Because when you go in reverse, you don't set off the airbags when you crash through the glass doors.
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Bojana smashes into the store entrance, and the surrounding wall collapses. Milan Lipoja is driving the white Audi.
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He and Bojana stay in their cars, engines running, while their fellow Panthers run in.
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Overhead security footage shows black-clad panthers, their faces masked, hammers in hand.
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At this point, a shopper at the mall takes out his BlackBerry and begins filming.
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So it's not high definition. It's grainy. But you can see exactly what happened.
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If you look closely, the panthers, they're coming out of the car. They're waving pistols around.
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The pistols are actually fake. It's another insurance policy. Nobody's going to get trigger-happy, no collateral damage.
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Cameras inside the graph boutique show two salesmen in suits running to the back of the store.
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Behind them, a Pink Panther moves calmly to the display cases. One by one, he smashes the glass, reaches in and tosses the merchandise into a bag.
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That's the sound of the security alarms going off. And that car honk is the signal from Milan and Bojana to the others inside Graf that 20 seconds have passed.
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It's time to go. Cameras inside Graf show the Pink Panthers file out one by one.
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They run out of the store with the loot and they jump back in their cars. And if you look carefully, as they're driving away, you can see something smashed into pieces on the ground.
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Yeah, what is that? So that's a shopper who's watching from the balcony above has thrown down a plastic chair, which is kind of a heroic act, but also a lame attempt to stop the thieves.
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Obviously, would not have slowed them down, but I give them an A for effort. And off they go, past the overhead security cameras and back through the smashed entrance of the Wafi Mall.
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From the very start to the very end, they're out of there in 53 seconds. 53 seconds, wow.
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And tell me, Alan, what were the 53 seconds worth at the end? What was the value of the goods that they managed to grab?
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So accounts do vary, but we're talking about around 3.4 million. The grainy video from that BlackBerry is posted online, and it goes viral.
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The whole thing feels intentional, like it's about more than the money. The Pink Panthers know they'll be caught on camera.
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They've gone to great lengths to make sure that they had matching Audis. It all seems designed for maximum spectacle.
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But why? Journalist Jelena Sovrich again. They wanted to become notorious in the whole world
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because if they become more famous, then it would get them better connections in this criminal world.
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They would have excellent recommendations recommendations in the world of mafia, in the world of drug cartels that could be very useful
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in other aspects of their life afterwards. That's why they got this crazy idea to get inside with
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the two cars. No one probably ever had the idea to do it in the shopping mall. So they were very
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tempted with this idea to do something so, so bold, so unique. If they're going for attention, it works.
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The Wafi Mall heist certainly brings them instant global notoriety. When Dubai hit, it was a complete explosion in media.
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Dmitri Voinov is a Serbian screenwriter and film scholar. He has researched the Pink Panthers extensively for his film All Panthers Are Pink.
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He sees a connection between the Panthers' staging of this heist as a made-for-media moment
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and earlier criminals. If you look at Bonnie and Clyde, who were the criminals performing for the media
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as their crime spree is happening. So Bonnie and Clyde were the first ones who were actually communicating with the media
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as their crime spree was an ongoing thing. I think that the Pink Panthers are almost there.
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And back home in Serbia, their exploits play well. Dubai had this element of brute force, which I think communicates with people here very
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much the sense of everything is possible if you have enough power to pull it off.
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Jelena Soric again. For most of them, they are not exactly heroes, but like a modern kind of hero, because they
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do this glorious robbery heist, you know, with fast cars and everything, so everything
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looks like a scene from the movie. The Panthers seem to get pretty much everything they want out of the Wafi Mall job.
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Fame, glory, money, and a feeling of invincibility. As for the Dubai police, such a public robbery, and in a shopping district no less, it's embarrassing.
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And the Dubai police was humiliated in a way because they asked for Interpol's help immediately.
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They did their best to look for them, but the escape plan was even better than the plan for the heist.
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So, Ilan, what was the escape plan? The freeway. There was an entrance to the freeway right by the Wafi Mall.
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I'm sure that's a big reason why they chose the mall in the first place. They mapped out where the police headquarters is located in relation to the mall.
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They planned it all out. They were able to jump on the freeway and make their escape.
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a ride. And then what? They head straight for the airport. Well, no, they have to get rid of the
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evidence, right? The cars. So they're on the freeway. I don't know, for three, maybe four
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minutes. And then they exit into a residential area that's very close to the Royal Palace.
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At the time, it's a newer area. Remember Dubai, it's still getting built up. So there are villas,
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there are ministries, but there are also big patches of desert. And between two big mansions,
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They drive up the cars, they douse them with gasoline, and then they light them on fire.
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So they set their cars on fire. And now what? Yeah, they destroyed the two cars.
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But there's a third car. They have a rental that's been parked there the whole time.
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And so they get into that car and they drive to the airport. The police don't even know what they're looking for at this point.
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They have fake passports. They able to get to the airport with really no hassles They fly first to France by some accounts and in any case they end up in Serbia safe and sound
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It's a perfect plan, almost. In a moment, someone makes a mistake. They leave the car windows closed,
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and there is not enough oxygen for the fire to burn the cars completely. And so, they do leave behind some evidence, some DNA.
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And there is something else. The police eventually linked the last getaway car, the one they rented, back to Bojana.
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Jelena Zoric. Whenever they would rent cars, boats, motorbikes, whatever was useful for the heist,
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they were always trying to rent it under the counter by paying cash. That's how it works usually.
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they offer more cash and then nobody records anything about the person who rented it.
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But this wasn't an option in the UAE. In Dubai, it was definitely different because it's not that kind of a city.
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So it's practically impossible to pay something in cash without leaving your ID,
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without leaving your credit card. The Panthers had stolen cars. They had fake passports.
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Clearly, they could have stolen credit cards if they needed them. But Boyana seems to intentionally use her own card on more than one occasion.
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So she said, OK, I'm going to pay this with my card. Everybody will know my name.
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The whole idea of the heist in Dubai was to do something spectacular. They wanted to be known all around the world.
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Boyana agreed to do it that way because as a part of the gang, she also wanted for her name to become famous after this And according to Jelena there was another factor that played into the decision At that time Serbia didn have any kind of agreement with the United Arab Emirates
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So Interpol couldn't do anything to her once she was back in Serbia. So the only price they were sure they would have to pay
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is that it wouldn't be possible for them to come back to Dubai ever. But it's not the only price the Pink Panthers would have to pay.
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Because any crime that gets this much attention demands a response. Even though they were careful not to harm anyone,
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this robbery was not something law enforcement could ignore. And so, in the wake of the Wafi-Mul heist,
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Interpol issues that urgent worldwide bulletin, the Red Notice, calling for the immediate arrest and extradition of one Boyana Mitic.
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Dubai is a turning point. The Wafi Moll heist makes the Panthers the subject of worldwide attention, for better or worse.
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But it's only the latest in a string of brazen smash-and-grab robberies that have been going on for some time.
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And Vladan Lazarevic, Bojana Metic and Milan Lepoja are just three among many. Coming up next on Infamous International, the Pink Panthers story.
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They want the wow factor. By doing all of these things that we associate with Pink Panther films, with James Bond films, with countless heist films, I think it actually makes it very, very hard to catch them.
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The Pink Panther's approach is incredibly successful. First came this guy wearing a suit, and then came another guy in a white mask almost immediately after him.
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He shot the tear gas in the faces of the clerks They stole this tiara The tiara itself was worth like million and they did it all in about 32 seconds But millions of dollars in stolen jewels
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present its own set of issues. The Pink Panthers, they like to hit high-end shops,
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high-end jewelry. Here's the problem. If it's something that costs $50 million from some famous jeweler,
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everybody in the business will know what it is. That's next time on Infamous International.
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The Pink Panther's Story. Infamous International The Pink Panther's Story was produced by Best Case Studios
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in association with Coda Story. Hosted by me, Natalia Antelava and written by Katrina Wolf,
00:30:12
Adam Pinkis, Suzanne Myers and David Markowitz. with help from Brent Katz and Matt Levin.
00:30:20
For Best Case Studios, executive producer Adam Pincus, senior producer David Markowitz,
00:30:27
producer Katrina Wolf, associate producer Hannah Leibovitz-Lockhard, and consulting producers Julie Goldstein and Louis Spiegler.
00:30:36
For Quora Story, reporting by Alain Greenberg with associate producer Rebecca Robinson.
00:30:43
Edited and sound designed by Galen Mullins and Max Michael Miller. Music by Dave Harrington.
00:30:50
Archival producers, Magda Gora and Paul Dallas. This has been an Exactly Right production.
00:30:57
Executive producers, Karen Kilgareff, Georgia Hartstark, and Danielle Kramer with consulting producer,
00:31:05
Kyle Ryan.