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.

In Paris, investigators are trying to determine if it was the Pink Panthers that struck again  this time in flowing foulards and wigs  at Harry Winston.

“Of course there is a hypothesis that it is the Pink Panthers, but we cannot at this stage say absolutely that it is them,” said Isabelle Montagne, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office. It was the second major robbery at the same store in the last year. “We’re open to all theories,” she said.

The risk adjustors and insurance syndicates with Lloyds of London  the Harry Winston insurer that also plays a supporting character in the original “Pink Panther” movie  harbor the same suspicions. They have placed classified advertisements all over the world, including the former Yugoslavia, to publicize a $1 million reward for information that leads to the recovery of the Harry Winston sparklers.

But to underline their suspicions, they have also placed a classified notice in France  not in one of the grand newspapers like Le Monde, but in a local daily, Le Parisien. The journal reaches the working class outskirts, the banlieue of Paris where the adjusters suspect that many of the professional thieves live.

France is already home  or make that a cold jail cell  for two former Pink Panther members from Serbia whom prosecutors blame for jewelry robberies that reaped over $9.8 million in glitter from swank boutiques along the French Riviera from St. Tropez and Cannes to the Atlantic Coast at Biarritz.