A man in the raspberry business from western Serbia smashes and grabs his way through a heist eight time zones away in Tokyo and scoots off past shopping centers and sushi bars with a $31-million necklace known as the Countess of Vendome.

Djordjije Rasovic graced arrest warrants, a thief with brazen nerves, part of an international Balkan crime gang known as the Pink Panthers. The Panthers, a collection of 150 to 200 Balkan men and a few women, have stolen about $140 million in jewellery and watches over the last decade from 100 luxury shops around the world, including boutiques in Paris, London, Monaco and Dubai.

The Pink Panthers — a name given by the Scotland Yard — come in rough, swinging hammers and axes, shattering glass, flashing semiautomatic pistols and an occasional grenade, and vanishing with gems in satchels lined with toilet paper to prevent scratching.

They’re untailored and uncoiffed, preferring black leather jackets and ball caps to cashmere and cuff links, a kind of Ocean’s 11 minus the panache. But they’re disciplined and fluent in many languages, and they strike with precision.

Their heists usually clock in at 90 seconds, and when one of them gets arrested, like, say, Rasovic, another takes his place in an organization that has grown wiser since the early days, when its members were so brash they didn’t bother to conceal their faces.

“They’ve become more than pure criminals, they’re heroes,” said Dragan Ilic, a morning radio talk show host in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. “They’re violent but they haven’t killed anyone. It’s as if they’re saying, ‘We can beat the technologically superior West with our raw power and intelligence’.”

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