In 2008 a court in Chambery, south-eastern France, found three Serb members of the Pink Panthers guilty of robberies in Biarritz, Cannes, Courchevel and Saint-Tropez. Nowadays France, and especially the Riviera, has become their favoured place to carry out their crimes. In all they have got away with some £150 million worth of goods from luxury stores, and millions of pounds worth of cash from casinos, during the past two decades. They have carried out around 120 heists across the globe, including further thefts in London, as well as in Paris, Dubai, Geneva, Monaco and Tokyo.

The Pink Panthers are said to speak several languages and travel on genuine passports issued to other people, but with the photos changed. It was a tactic copied from the 1963 Pink Panther film, starring Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau. The Pink Panthers earned their name in 1993 after stealing a £500,000 diamond from a jewellers in London's Mayfair and hiding it in a jar of face cream. Prosecutors from the Anti-Banditry Brigade in Marseilles are connecting the raid with nine carried out since April 2010, including one on the Lucien Barriere Casino in nearby Cassis in February. “Both robberies showed the typical modus operandi of the Pink Panthers, swift, meticulously planned, brutally efficient and using heavy weapons.” A spokesman for the Marseille anti-banditry brigade investigating the latest robberies said: “In the first raid, the men emptied the casino of all its funds and then made off at high speed on to the motorway towards Marseilles.

The modus operandi of pink panther