'I, the Pink Panther': how a famous basketball player became the head of a criminal gang
'16.01.2021'
Source: Lenta.ru
How a two-meter beauty basketball player got into a gang, robbed millions and escaped from prison - says Lenta.ru.
Basketball player Oliver Chirkovic was the star of Yugoslavia. She had everything: youth, attractiveness, money, and a good position in the Red Star club, where she got a job at the end of her career in sports. However, suddenly something happened that no one expected from this successful young woman: Chirkovich became a member of the famous thieves' group "Pink Panthers", began to rob jewelry stores and took out money and jewelry worth millions of dollars from boutiques. Even her capture did not help: Chirkovich became the first woman in history who managed to escape from a Greek prison.
Step onto the parquet
Olivera Vasic was born in 1969 in Belgrade. The girl grew up active and mobile - it was obvious that her energy was best directed to sports. The choice fell on basketball: she grew rapidly, overtaking her peers - and already in her teens she stretched out to almost two meters - the height of young Vasich was 1,94 meters.
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The athlete was making progress and even became a member of the junior women's team of Yugoslavia. In 1988, she, along with Daniela Ilic, Eleanor Wild, Danira Nakic and other teammates, took third place at the European Championship. Colleagues remember her as a disciplined athlete, although she does not have enough stars from the sky. Despite the fact that then Vasich was not the brightest and strongest in the team and she could not be called a top player, she often managed to leave the national team's bench and take a place on the court.
“In the late eighties, I trained her in the youth selection of Yugoslavia. She did not have a prominent role, so no one remembers her, but sometimes she got up from the bench. I never imagined that she would become a criminal, ”the coach later said about her.
Now he is disappointed in the former pupil, as he is sure that athletes and athletes should be an example for all young people, not only in well-known public actions, but also in everyday life.
In the early 1990s, Vasich moved to Greece, where she met her future husband, Srechko Chirkovich. Her sports career went uphill: in the first season she was named the best legionnaire of the Athens "Pagrati", as well as the top scorer of the local women's championship. Thanks to her, the club regained its former glory. In 1997, Oliver married Srechko and soon gave birth to a son, Nikolai.
She went on maternity leave for only six months - she so badly wanted to return to the parquet floor. Soon one more season awaited her in the Slovenian club “Celje”, and then “Crvena zvezda”. At the end of her sports career on the floor in 2000, Chirkovich received an administrative position at the Crvena Zvezda basketball club, but she did not get much pleasure from this work.
From the outside, it seemed that her life as a whole was a success, however, despite this, successful both in work and in her personal life, the girl was carried away by the world of crime. At first, she resold illegally obtained clothes and shoes, later she herself began to steal expensive status goods, mainly clothes. The former basketball player soon switched to jewelry - including very expensive jewelry.
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It was her entrance ticket to the most famous and dangerous group of robbers of the time - the Pink Panthers. Chirkovich became their symbol and the most famous representative, and her life has now turned into a crime drama
Now she claims that she cannot fully explain her motivation.
“There are many different people in me. There is no explanation. I am a combination of the incompatible, a woman who carries paradoxes, I have no explanation for my life. I can only retell it through my books, I can give recommendations - now I know where I went wrong, but it was all dictated by my rebellious nature, a little adventurous spirit, money that comes quickly ... Unlimited freedom - that's what it leads to. " , She explains.
Cat look
The backbone of the legendary group "Pink Panthers" are people from the Balkans who have survived a series of wars in Yugoslavia. Most likely, many of the gang members were combat veterans in the conflict zone, natives of Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia. They have carried out hundreds of raids, their production is estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars. For the first time they started talking about daring robbers in 2003, when they robbed a London jeweler, seizing a rare diamond worth about half a million pounds. Then they hid the prey in a cream jar.
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European law enforcement officers almost jokingly nicknamed the gang "Pink Panther" - with an eye on the plot of the famous crime film, in the center of the plot of which is the theft of a diamond. They did not even imagine that the atrocities of the "panthers" would drag on for decades, and the ironic nickname would sound ominous for all European jewelry houses. So, in 2005, criminals took out jewelry worth almost a million pounds from the Graff store in London. An identical crime occurred three years earlier, but then it was not associated with the activities of the "panthers".
The Panthers acted almost cinematically. For example, before the robbery of a store in Biarizza, criminals painted benches in the vicinity of the boutique so that passers-by and vacationers did not accidentally witness the raid. Also indicative was the daring robbery of the Harry Winston boutique in Paris - from now on it was possible to make out the handwriting of the criminals.
Then four men, dressed in women's clothes and blond wigs, pretended to be rich clients in order to steal jewelry worth tens of millions of dollars
Later, the group again robbed the Graff boutique in London - then the thieves used prosthetic makeup to change their appearance, that is, in fact, they stuck new faces on top of the real ones.
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For years, Interpol employees have chased robbers around the world. By 2010, the "panthers" were accused of nearly fifteen hundred thefts committed in 20 countries of the world - not only in Europe, but also in the United States, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. At the same time, very little was known about the gang itself: it was assumed that the group had an almost decentralized scattered structure and that it "employs" from 60 to 200 people. They were responsible for breaking into the Doge's Palace in Venice and stealing iconic and famous items, for example, a diamond necklace called "The Countess de Vendome" - 116 large diamonds, valued at the time of the theft at $ 31 million.
Dragon woman
"My name is Olya. I am a prisoner serving my sentence in the Greek prison of Eleonas Tiva. I have been sentenced to twelve, twelve and eight years for organized crime, aggravated theft and armed robbery. I am considered a member of the Pink Panther international criminal gang. I came back here many times and became the most famous person here, because I am the only woman who escaped from a Greek prison. In this way, I have earned the status of a dangerous prisoner, which implies special security measures during my trips to court, to the district judges, to the hospital and the like, ”- this is how Chirkovich's autobiography, which she wrote while in prison, begins.
Now the book is almost impossible to find: Chirkovich has become almost a celebrity, her books are quickly sold out. But how did she achieve such fame?
Towards the end of her basketball career, Oliver developed an odd hobby - she reselling branded clothing and fur coats. The athlete received the goods from suppliers from Turkey and Greece - and was aware of its not entirely legal origin.
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But her clients, including famous athletes, artists and even politicians, did not suspect anything, hoping primarily for the reputation of a young basketball player. A few years later, Oliver organized a thieves' gang, and invested the money obtained by dishonest means in cars and real estate. In many ways, she was supported by her husband, who was also associated with the underworld.
According to Chirkovich, she did not perceive the robberies in which she participated as a real theft, but regarded them as "the actions of Robin Hood, who steals from the rich." She is sure that since everything is insured in banks, theft does not count, since banks, according to her assurances, are “robbers in law”.
“It all seemed anarchic and rebellious to me. At first I started buying stolen goods in bulk. I opened a showroom in Belgrade. This is the home version of the boutique that sells stolen branded goods. Bought by politicians, athletes and singers. This was my first step towards crime. When I realized that thieves spend money quickly and do not have enough money, I became an organizer. I had money to organize my affairs. I found a place to live and just showed them the store that interests me. Because they were financially incompetent, I started to worry about money as well. Then everything got serious. Very quickly, I was the head of the Pink Panthers. Because I had apartments to accommodate them, another apartment for stolen goods, I had buyers. Everything was thought out to the smallest detail, ”says the woman.
Chirkovich became a famous representative of the "panthers". She acted only on the territory of Greece and received the nickname Archondizi from local law enforcement agencies - Dragon Woman, or Spider Woman. She reveled in her impunity: in the book I, the Pink Panther, she continues to insist that she built her whole world and wrote her own rules of life, which she will pass on to future generations.
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“They envied me, admired me, complained to me. I haven't changed. I stuck to my principles even when they began to destroy and endanger me, ”Chirkovich says, noting that it was her unyielding character and self-confidence that led her to a“ dangerous ”life, turning her life“ in the wrong direction ”.
Prison story
Chirkovich first encountered the police only in 2006. It happened by accident: the Cretan patrolmen, while searching the woman's car, found pliers, with the help of which her gang had robbed a jewelry store the day before. The victims identified both the instrument and the tall lady who helped the criminals. According to her, this was then enough for a court decision.
“They immediately connected me with all the thefts that took place on the Greek islands and were not ours, but the work of other criminals whom I did not even know,” she complained.
Chirkovic ended up first in a Cretan prison, and then in the largest prison of Korydallos in Athens, where she was transferred after a conflict with another prisoner.
Later it turned out that the imprisonment did not re-educate the thief, but hardened her and made her continue to be more careful and sophisticated. In addition, all this time, according to Chirkovich, she suffered incredibly because of the separation from the child, which seemed to her a nightmare.
Reunited with her family, for years she organized new masterly robberies, and the glory of the "panthers" has already thundered around the world. In the spring of 2012, while preparing for a new "case", the police seized her in her own apartment. She soon returned to Korydallos again.
There Chirkovich was already known - not only because of her numerous violations of law, but also because of her amazing talent for drawing. She discovered it in herself during her previous imprisonment and, years later, enthusiastically continued to create masterpieces. This set her apart from other criminals, and many overseers were imbued with sympathy for her. For several weeks, she won the trust of both the top administration and the overseers.
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Soon there was a plan of escape: she persuaded one of the guards to help - take the paints from her relatives with her. When he unlocked the door, the visitor stunned him with a blow to the head and disappeared with Oliver on a motorcycle. This was the first ever escape from a heavily guarded Greek prison. At first, no one even noticed that the prisoner had disappeared. Chirkovic fled to her native Serbia through the forests of Macedonia and Montenegro
However, after only six weeks, Chirkovich returned to “work”. After the capture, the local police found out how dangerous a recidivist who returned home was. After the first trial, she received 32 and a half years in prison for robbery and organizing criminal activities. She was sent to the Eleonas Tiva maximum security prison.
To the surprise of law enforcement officers, then many local residents stood up for the criminal, as well as the administration of the Pagrati basketball club, for which she played in the 1990s. After some time, with the help of an appeal, the sentence was commuted, and in August 2017, after five and a half years in prison, Oliver was acquitted on some charges and released, but she was temporarily banned from entering Greece. She returned to Serbia again.
In conclusion, Chirkovich wrote an autobiography (published as "The Pink Panther. My Prison Confession" and "I, The Pink Panther: Confession") and painted many pictures. Now she has turned her life into a PR story: she maintains a blog on Instagram, which even has a blue verification check mark, meaning the "official" page of the star, and boasts almost 56 thousand subscribers.
Stories - motivating quotes (including from their own books) and touching messages, and uploaded photos of beautiful interiors and groomed selfies are gaining thousands of likes. It seems that this woman finally has everything calm: status, shooting on talk shows, impeccable appearance in her sixties, a white-toothed handsome son.
"He who is looking for a soul in books will find me; he who listens to me with his heart will understand me!" - Chirkovich reports in the profile description.
