the heist at harry's

The Harry Winston store in Paris

The Harry Winston store in Paris was taken over a few weeks ago by four men, three of whom were in blonde wigs and apparently pretty convincingly fem. It was all over in 15 minutes. It must have been GLORIOUS! This NYTimes article chronicles what Hollywood dreams of. Mad cool!

Some highlights:

"Defense lawyers for some thieves who have been arrested insist that the name Pink Panthers is an invention of drama-loving law enforcement authorities. But investigators say there are about 200 members in the group — linked by village and blood — and they blame the group for scooping up jewels worth more than $132 million in bold robberies in Dubai, Switzerland, Japan, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Monaco. They live all over Europe, with some working in mundane jobs as hospital cleaners, waiting to be summoned for the next discount flight to a foreign capital, they said.

The group’s fugitive ringleader, Dragan Mikic, was sentenced in absentia to 15 years. He vanished from prison in 2005 after sliding down a ladder as his accomplices attacked the watchtower with machine-gun fire.

That cool cleverness, boldness and speed are the hallmarks of the ultra lux robberies, which lead investigators to speculate that the Pink Panthers are casting for ideas from the crème de la crème of movie thieves — right down to hiding a signature $657,000 blue diamond in a jar of face cream, as one did for his girlfriend.

In Dubai, masked members of the gang were blamed last year for ramming two Audi automobiles into the window of a Graff jewelry boutique in a gleaming Wafi City shopping mall. They scooped up $3.4 million of diamonds and then bolted away in the same cars — in a daylight heist that has become a YouTube classic with more than 200,000 hits. Later, they burned the cars to erase their traces. "

Ahh this blows my mind so cool.