Thiefhunters in Paradise

Give your hotel room the once-over.

Bob and I sleep more nights in hotels than in our own home and, to date, we have never been ripped off in a hotel room. True, we use a certain amount of care, but our laptops are usually left out and sometimes valuables are more hidden than locked. We stay in hotels ranked from six stars to no stars, depending on our sponsors and our intentions. In each hotel room, we make a quick and automatic assessment of risks and adjust our behavior to correspond. We have never walked out of a hotel* because of safety issues; we simply adopt the necessary precautions.

We evaluate several pivotal points:

The room key: we prefer electronic card keys. Old-fashioned metal keys can be copied, and where might copies be floating around? Electronic locks are usually recoded after each guest. Most electronic locks save records of whose keys have recently gained entry. Authorized keys are registered to their users. So if a guest reports a problem, security can tap into records stored in the lock’s mechanism and see the last ten or so entries, be they housekeeping, an engineer, a minibar man, or the guest himself.

In 2007, Tokyo's Disneyland Hilton issued paper keys with room numbers printed on them.

Electronic key cards should not be marked with a room number. They’re usually given in a folder which identifies the room. Leave the folder in the room when you go out and carry just the un-numbered magnetic card. If you lose the key, the safety of your room won’t be compromised.

Some hotels still use metal keys attached to a big fat ornament and expect guests to leave keys at the front desk when going out. I’m not fond of this method for several reasons. First, I prefer privacy and anonymity rather than announcing my comings and goings. In some hotels, anyone can look at the hooks or pigeonholes behind the desk and know if a room is occupied or empty. Second, I don’t care for the delay entailed in asking for the key on returning. I could just take the thing with me, but its design discourages that. So third, I don’t want to haul around a chunk of brass the size of a doorknocker. And finally, these keys are usually well identified with the name of the hotel and room number. Losing it would expose one to substantial risk. When possible, Bob and I remove the key from its chunk and just carry it, re-attaching it before check-out. At other times, we go traditional and turn in the key as the hotel suggests.

Deadbolts and door latches: we like these for security during the night, but they aren’t universal. In Paris once, two men entered our room in the dead of night. Luckily, we woke up and Bob dramatically commanded them to get out. “Pardon,” they said, “c’est une erreur,” it is a mistake. The strange thing was that they had been standing there whispering for a moment. If it had truly been a mistake, wouldn’t they immediately back out of an occupied room? We should have placed a chair in front of the door beneath the knob.

Peephole in the door: I always look out at who’s knocking on the door, and if there’s no peephole, I ask through the closed door. Minibar? No thanks. Window cleaner? Wait til I check out. Engineer? I’ll call the front desk and find out who and why.

Connecting doors to adjoining rooms: I always double check to make sure they’re locked. They always are.

Windows: this is what I look at first, mostly because I hope they open. If they do open, I need to know about outside access. Is there a balcony? If so, there’s probably access to mine from a neighboring balcony. I’ve spoken enough with Frank Black, a career burglar, to never leave a room with an open balcony door. Frank specialized in burglarizing high-rise apartment buildings, but 21 years in prison has, apparently, retired him from that business. He’s now a respected tattoo artist and children’s book author.

In Florida (and I presume elsewhere, too), a certain subset of cat burglar is called a pants burglar. These creep in at night through open lanai doors, while the occupants are sleeping. They’re named for their beeline to men’s trousers, where they hope to find a wallet. They also visit the dresser top hoping to find, perhaps, a woman’s ring taken off for the night.

One morning I woke to see a perfect convergence of wires out the window. Only the view from my pillow created this lovely, serendipitous intersection of three unconnected and discrete (phone? electric?) lines.

I love an open window, but before I sleep with a breeze, I need to analyze window access. If my room is on the ground floor, on an atrium floor, or if it has a rooftop out the window, I won’t sleep with it open. If there are nearby balconies, forget it. Of course it also depends on the overall ambiance and character of the property. At a safari lodge in Tanzania I’ll worry more about baboons. In a thatched-roof teak tree-house in Bali, I figure I’ve paid enough to expect good security. At an all-inclusive beach resort with rooms that don’t lock—well, I planned for that when I packed.

After a quick appraisal of the room’s security combined with its overall quality, we know how careful we want to be. In truth, we leave our laptops out in full view in about eighty-five percent of the rooms we stay in. Small valuables? Never. Wallets and jewelry? In the safe.

Some travelers believe in using duct tape to fasten their valuables to the underside of a bedside table, or other furniture. I can’t endorse that practice, unless it’s a last resort.

“During peak travel seasons hotels tend to use a lot of transient help,” Bob Arno says, “and sometimes the screening of these temporary employees is not as high as it could be. So yes, one always has to be concerned about hotel room theft.” The only way to protect your small valuables is to lock them in the hotel room safe.

But is the safe safe? We generally feel secure with electronic safes that allow us to key in our own code or swipe our own magnetic strip. For a magnetic strip, we use an airline or telephone card, not a credit card. The old-fashioned type of safe that takes a regular metal key we do not consider safe and do not use. We’ve surveyed police officers, hotel security, and FBI agents on this issue, and they agree with this reasoning.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Four: Hotels—Have a Nice Stay

*Once, during a short stay in a Greek hotel, we felt it unwise to leave the things in our room unattended. Had our visit been longer than overnight, we would have relocated.

Was it instinct or anger that made Bob chase my bagsnatcher? He rocketed down the street brandishing the famous umbrella weapon that was so ineffectual in Naples. I had managed nothing more than “Hey!,” but my weak protestation was like the starting gun at the Monaco Grand Prix. Two grown men went from zero to sixty in an instant.

I can’t say I was caught unaware when the bagsnatcher stepped up to meet me, face to face. He calmly looked me in the eyes, seized the strap of my purse with both hands, and yanked it hard enough to break the leather against my shoulder. It happened much faster than you can read that sentence.

I gave my little shout and the creep was off and running, Bob on his tail. It took me several seconds to realize that I still had the purse clutched tightly in my hands. I could have laughed, but for the fact that my husband was in pursuit of a potentially dangerous criminal in a decidedly unsafe neighborhood.

The street we had walked was full of the necessities of life in this non-touristy part of Barcelona, lined with tiny hardware, shoe repair, and paint shops. We had been directed there, without any specific warning, in search of a few pieces of wood. Peeking through doorways seeking the lumberyard, we revealed ourselves as obvious outsiders. As we strayed ever further from the relative safety of La Rambla, we sensed a vague but growing threat of danger.

My antennas were out way before the interloper trespassed so suddenly into my aura. I didn’t see his approach, but I had already assumed a protective posture. Both my hands held the small purse I wore diagonally crossed over my chest.

Bob was a few steps ahead of me and didn’t see the confrontation. It only lasted two seconds. It’s astonishing what analysis and conclusions the brain can manage in those instants. I thought the man looked ordinary but grave. He stood uncomfortably close and made uncommon eye contact. I thought he would speak. I thought he would ask a question, or offer advice. Against my will, I slipped into the trusting attitude of a traveler in a foreign land. And that was my mistake.

Perhaps I’d have reacted quicker or with more suspicion if the bagsnatcher had looked sleazy, mean, or desperate. But he didn’t, and I gave him the benefit of any doubt. In those two seconds, the gentleman had all the opportunity he needed to seize the strap of my bag and yank.

My feeble objection was enough to get Bob’s attention. He whirled around and leapt into pursuit, his long stride a clear advantage. When the perp dashed into a crowded alley, I thought it was all over. Bob bellowed “Policia!” at a volume that would fill an amphitheater. I, far behind, expected to see the escaping sprinter blocked or tripped by the local loiterers.

On the contrary. The sea of people opened for his getaway, then closed up again to watch the tall guy run. They didn’t exactly block Bob’s path, but seemed to plant themselves firmly as obstacles. Bob had to give up.

For me, the humiliation suffered by the would-be thief was almost enough. Like a cat with a mouthful of feathers, he ran with nothing more than twelve inches of torn leather strap in his fist. Yet, I was shaken and weak-kneed immediately following the experience, and the after effects lingered for months. Despite the fact that I wasn’t hurt, I lost nothing of value, and Bob hadn’t been tripped in the chase, I felt victimized.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Five: Rip-Offs: Introducing… the Opportunist

A dozen boys swarmed around Gary Ferrari in front of the Sheraton Hotel in Lima. At least it seemed like a dozen—they’d appeared out of nowhere and were gone in just a few seconds. In that cyclone of baby-faces and a hundred probing fingers, they got his wallet and the gold chain from his neck.

“We call them pirañas,” said Dora Pinedo, concierge at the Sheraton. “They are everywhere.”

“I don’t know how they got my chain,” said Gary, rubbing the red welt on his neck. “It was under my shirt.” He didn’t realize that the boys had learned to recognize the telltale ridge of fabric that covers any chain worth stealing.

“They’re usually seven-, eight-, nine-year-old boys,” Dora told us, “and they mob their victim in groups of six to ten. There is nothing one can do with so many little hands all over.”

We interviewed Petter Infante, 28, and Wilmer Sulca, 17, both grown-up pirañas. We found them at Lima’s University Park, where a comedy presentation was taking place in an entertainment pit, rather like a small amphitheater. Hundreds of people surrounded the pit, transfixed. Others loitered around the audience, more sat on cement benches, and many were asleep in the grass. Petter and Wilmer looked at us skeptically but agreed to talk to us after Gori, our interpreter, paid off a policeman patrolling the park.

“But not here,” Wilmer said.

“Anywhere you want,” said Bob. Right, let’s enter their lair, and let’s take our fancy equipment in with us. The five of us piled into a taxi and Wilmer instructed the driver in staccato Spanish. Where were they taking us? I looked at Gori for assurance but our fine-boned archeology-student interpreter was not a bodyguard.

Wilmer led us into a garage-like cantina, dark, deserted, music blaring, disco lights flashing. The boys ordered huge bottles of Cristal beer. Bob wired Petter with a microphone and I set up our video camera, hyper-conscious of our vulnerability—read that: scared. My eyes were glued to Petter’s left arm, a mass of parallel scars, layer upon layer of them. A cut on his wrist was gaping open, infected. I used the gash to focus the camera.

“The first thing I ever stole was a chicken,” Petter said. “I was twelve years old, alone, and hungry. I had small brothers to take care of.” Petter’s expressive face told a many-chaptered tale of violence: his snaggle teeth were edged with gold, his cheeks crosshatched with scars.

“I’m best at stealing watches. I just grab it off someone walking, then run. I’m a very fast runner. The victim could never catch me. We call this arreba tar. It means run-steal.”

He stood to demonstrate his expertise. Bob stood to be victim. “You can see there’s nothing in his front pocket, it’s flat,” Petter said. Then he did a lightning fast dip and grab into Bob’s back pocket. The wallet flew upward with a grand flourish, like the follow-through of a tennis stroke.

“We’ll steal anything,” Wilmer said, “nothing in particular. It’s all easy. It’s like a game.” Wilmer then showed the same method from Bob’s front pocket, finishing with the same exuberant flourish. “Cocagado—I’m already gone. By the time the victim realizes, we’re cocagado.”

The knife scars on Petter’s arm are like stripes on an officer’s shoulders: you have to respect him. You see he’s tough and dangerous. He started cutting himself a few years ago.

“If the police catch you, you cut yourself and they release you. They don’t want you if you’re cut and bleeding.”

“I’m on the street nine years and I never cut myself,” Wilmer said. “I don’t like to do that. We don’t have the same philosophy, Petter and I. He likes to cut himself, I do not. We think differently.”

(A police officer explained that an injured arrestee must be taken to a hospital, which requires hours of paperwork. If an arresting officer is near the end of his shift, he may not want to pursue such lengthy formalities.)

Petter and Wilmer are opportunists, pirañas grown into hardened thieves. Petter thinks nothing of threatening his victims with a knife. I don’t know if he ever has or would use it. The boys’ main operative is speed.

“We wait at the bus stops and look for someone with a good watch, or something else to take. We wait until the bus doors are ready to close then grab it and run. And sometimes we grab things through the open windows of the bus. We reach inside and grab cellphones, watches, glasses, purses, anything.”

Opportunists look for sure bets, for temptations, for the fat wallet protruding from a back pocket “like a gift,” as a pickpocket in Prague told me. “We call it ‘the other man’s pocket,’” a Russian thief revealed; “the sucker pocket,” said another. “Tourists make it too easy,” complained a man in Prague whose family members were admitted thieves.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Five: Rip-Offs: Introducing… the Opportunist

A tour of the muti market, where witchdoctors sell traditional medicine.

South Africa—It was somewhat of a shock to find nothing but white lines on asphalt in the place we knew we left a van. We couldn’t help but wonder whether our minds were slipping and the van stood undisturbed in a forgotten location. But there it wasn’t, high noon and sixty feet from the entrance of Rustenburg’s busiest supermarket. We stood two and a half hours, groceries dripping and spoiling, staring morosely at our empty parking space as we waited for the South African Police. They never bothered to show up.

So the van was stolen; we shouldn’t have been surprised. We’d read in the local papers how often these vehicles disappear into the taxi trade, and our own experience had provided us with enough warnings. Once we’d returned from an hour in a Johannesburg mall to find the ignition busted by a would-be thief who’d easily entered the vehicle but couldn’t get it started, presumably due to the special electronic safety key system with which the van was equipped. Weeks later in the same parking lot a less-skilled perpetrator was foiled, ruining only the door lock. Then, the week before Christmas, we were jabbed by the foul fingers of crime in a more personal manner.

Winding up a long stay in South Africa, we had packed a few boxes to mail home. The year had seen a natural accumulation of files, notes, photos, and clothing purchased to shield us from a winter for which we were ill-prepared. Though we weren’t sending anything of major value, we were distressed to learn that it wasn’t possible to insure any mail to the U.S. We never completely trust international mail, especially in nations rife with poverty. In addition to sloppy and careless handling, we worry about stamp-stealing, prevalent in many parts of Africa. Postal workers are known to steam stamps off envelopes, discard the letters, and earn pennies for the stamps. But as we couldn’t justify sending everything air cargo, we packed up four twenty-pound boxes of a year’s slough.

In Rustenburg, an hour’s drive from where we lived, we rushed to the post office, as we knew it closed for lunch at one. We parked at the busy entrance, directly in front of the public telephones. I waited in the van with the parcels while Bob went to buy tape for a final touch on the labels. I was engrossed in Newsweek when a sullen man materialized at my open window. He asked where some street or shop was; I couldn’t quite understand, as he spoke in the submissive, barely audible mumble so many South Africans used. I asked him several times to repeat himself—we were always so sensitive about being friendly and courteous to everyone there.

A couple of (former?) thieves describe the powers of the bark and animal-part medicines.

Meanwhile, a second man appeared at the open driver’s side window and asked another unintelligible question. With a stranger on either side of me, open windows, keys dangling in the ignition, I felt frighteningly vulnerable. I casually lowered a hand to my bag and shoved my watch wrist down and out of sight, trying to look at both men at once while politely saying I don’t know, sorry, no. I was definitely nervous.

Both the lost souls wandered innocently away in seemingly separate directions and Bob returned with his purchase. Being an unpredictable land, the post office closed at 12:30, not 1:00 that day, so we missed it after all, and only by two minutes. While we taped labels, I told Bob what had happened, and we discussed how close we’d come to being ripped off.

We locked and left the van, and walked to our usual lunch place two blocks away, grumbling about what a shame it was that we had to suspect people who are most likely decent and honest. We did feel certain we were almost robbed, even though the gentlemen merely asked for directions. Did they appear shady? By our cultural standards, yes. But in South Africa, the downcast eyes, low mumbled speech, and meek stance seem to be the product of generations of oppression and domination, if not their own aboriginal behavior. As we analyzed the origin of the character traits, we felt guilty. Were we prejudiced, or merely wise?

Bathe with this stuff and you'll become invisible to police, we're told.

Not wise. We returned forty minutes later to find only one of our four boxes left in the locked-tight van. Yes, in retrospect, leaving the boxes in the unattended van was stupid. We should have known. But in broad daylight, on a crowded street, right in front of a government building—who would think they’d have the nerve? We half-expected to lose a box or two in the mailing, but not before the mailing.
Of course none of the people at the telephones or waiting for the post office to reopen saw anything. Off we went to the police station, where officers assured us we’d never see our things again. Our clothing would be put to good use and our files, photos, and books would most likely fuel an evening’s cooking fire.

We’d had the privilege of using a borrowed van for weekly treks into town from where we lived in the bush. Careful and conscientious, we treated the van as if it were our own; that is, we parked it in the busiest, closest, and best-lit places, and always ensured it was locked securely. Despite this, the statistics were shocking. In 45 weeks we borrowed the van about 40 times, almost once a week. With our four occurrences, we were victimized ten percent of the times we drove. This would translate to 36 times a year, an intolerable figure, if we had driven every day, as we do at home.

We were not virginal victims. In California, our house had been robbed, our car stereo stolen, and an illegal alien once tried to get into my bedroom window while I was home alone. In the latter case, the police arrived swiftly, apprehended the creep and, before my eyes, dispossessed him of a knife, a screwdriver, and a few hundred pornographic pictures. But these three affronts were spread over seven years and, until South Africa, comprised our entire experience as victims of crime.

With the frequency of our South African incidents, it became difficult to give the benefit of the doubt to the average man on the street, the man who wouldn’t meet our gaze and mumbled incoherently into the ground. Of course it could be argued that our logic was flawed, that there was no proof who our thieves were. True. But aren’t we all susceptible to hunches and assumptions that grow from experience? We tend to generalize, to the detriment of many, and judge a whole by its most visible parts. The people who indulge in violence and crime poison our perception of the group.

Johannesburg children

Bob and I left that country with a unique South African souvenir tucked safely away, an unfortunate byproduct of the chronic crime we experienced there. Not rare but valuable, we took away a useful and lasting kernel of cynicism, planted by thieves. As we continue living the lives of expatriots, and even in our own country, we’re more suspicious of and aloof to everyone who approaches us.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams

Chapter Three: Getting There—With all your Marbles

For more on alternative souvenirs, listen to the Tiger Lillies’ song in this post.

The famously crazy traffic in Naples

When we interviewed Luciano in Naples, Italy, our translator, a Napolitano, explained how Rolexes are stolen off the wrists of drivers in the summer.

The team targets expensive cars and scopes out the drivers’ watches from the vantage point of a motorcycle. It’s hot. The windows are up and the air-conditioner is on. Traffic is heavy, as always in Naples, and there are no such things as lanes. Cars squeeze into whatever interstices exist.

There’s a Mercedes that fits the bill. A scooter slips alongside it; the scooter driver folds down the Mercedes’ side mirror in order to pass, and winds away through the gridlock. The Mercedes driver opens her window and readjusts the side mirror with her left hand. That’s the moment another scooter zooms up, rips the Rolex or Cartier or Piaget right off the extended wrist, follows the first scooter between stagnant cars, and disappears into an alley.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Three: Getting There—With all your Marbles

“No thanks, I’ll carry that bag myself,” Marianne Crossley said to the porter as she stepped out of the London black cab, “it’s too valuable.” She handed a fistful of pound sterling to the driver, hefted her designer tote, and followed the porter into the cool marble lobby of the Langham Hilton Hotel.

Elegance embraced her. Marianne straightened her posture. The Langham was exclusive. She was privileged. She imagined herself belonging to the “UC,” as she thought of it, English Upper Class. Her entire European vacation would be the height of luxury; the black cab and Langham lobby were just the beginning.

Marianne chatted brightly with the reception staff as she checked in, a fresh veneer of energy covering the exhaustion and jetlag of her journey. Emotionally, she had already slipped into something comfortable, something contrived, perhaps a bit pretentious. Cloistered within the confines of the lobby, she felt protected, shielded from the rudenesses of the real world.

You know what’s coming. Marianne took her room key in one hand and reached for her tote with the other. It was gone.

The Langham’s two lobby cameras caught the crook, but the video was not monitored by security officers and was only viewed after the fact. When the larceny was discovered and the tapes reviewed, an interloper could be seen in Marianne’s proximity; but the front desk blocked the camera’s view of the tote. Neither the hotel, nor the police, recognized the suspect as a known thief.

Hotel lobbies are common sites of bag theft. To the guest they offer a false sense of security, with doormen in their guard-like uniforms, desk clerks facing outward, and bellmen looking after luggage. In reality, most anyone can enter a lobby, and who’s to say whether or not they have legitimate business in the hotel? At peak hours, reception staff are harried and the lobby swirls with the incoming, the outgoing, guests of guests, and lookyloos.

Some small hotels keep their entrances locked and visitors must be buzzed in, but many of these have no security staff or video surveillance. Large hotels, with shops and restaurants open to the public, may have guards and cameras but are as exclusive as a post office: anyone can come and go without suspicion. Which are safer?

There is no answer to that question. The responsibility for personal belongings is the traveler’s—period. We may give our luggage to bellmen and that is fine; but if we don’t, or if we have a carry-on, a roll-aboard, a purse, or anything we prefer to handle ourselves, its safekeeping is our responsibility. Hotel staff don’t know whose is whose or who belongs to whom. Perhaps a Langham employee saw a man take Marianne’s bag. Perhaps he assumed the man was Marianne’s husband.

The Langham is not particularly prone to lobby lifts, and neither did it suffer a rash of them. Perhaps an opportunist overheard Marianne’s general announcement in the portico that her bag was “too valuable” to entrust to a hotel employee. Perhaps not.

Marianne was luckier than most victims. Her bag was found intact by a London businessman who went to the trouble of phoning her home in America. Relatives there told him where she was staying and he personally delivered the bag to her, refusing a reward or reimbursement for the international phone call. Only cash had been taken from Marianne’s bag. Yet, in the interim days, she’d had to replace her passport and airline tickets, cancel her credit cards, arrange to get cash, and file a police report.

If the Langham were on busy Oxford Street, this lobby lift would make more sense. But it’s not; the Langham is on a relatively quiet street several blocks off Oxford. Hotels smack on a main tourist drag have many more lobby thefts; those on La Rambla, in Barcelona, come first to my mind. But if it can happen at the Langham, it can happen anywhere.

And if it can happen in seemingly-safe Scandinavia, it can happen anywhere. Certain frequent visitors during Stockholm’s summer season have been dubbed “breakfast thieves.” They don’t steal breakfast; they lurk on the fringes of sumptuous buffets at upscale hotels, waiting for a moment of inattention.

“They lie in wait for a businessman to fetch a second glass of orange juice,” said Anders Fogelberg, head of the Stockholm police department’s tiny pickpocket detail, “and in that instant of opportunity, they and the businessman’s laptop, briefcase, or mini-computer skip out the door.”

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Four: Hotels: Have a Nice Stay

Bob Arno with a pickpocket in Mumbai, 2001.

RAILWAY RAJ

With a firm grip on the patient’s big toe, the hospital orderly entered the police inspector’s office. He carried the full weight of the patient’s plastered leg, which extended from the wheelchair without any other support. As he was pushed from behind and pulled by the toe, the patient hunched awkwardly in the rusty iron wheelchair. A male nurse had the ancient chair tipped precariously back, which thrust the broken leg to a painful height.

As he was wheeled in, the patient gripped the armrest of the chair with one hand and clutched his broken ribs with the other. A procession of plainclothes police and hospital staff followed. The patient was a pickpocket, brutally beaten by his most recent victim.

Mumbai Police Inspector Ashok Desai had not required much prodding to produce a pickpocket. He sat behind the desk in his lilac-colored office at Victoria Terminus and chatted amiably with us, shoes and socks off, cap off, smooth bald head reflecting the slow revolutions of a ceiling fan. Curiously eager to cooperate, he buzzed his peon and ordered him in Hindi when we asked to interview a thief. Shortly thereafter, his office doors were thrown open and the broken criminal wheeled in.

“Now let me explain something,” Bob said, leaning forward. “If he lies to me, I will know. I want only the truth.”

Without waiting for translation, the pickpocket replied in Hindi. “I speak only the truth to you,” he said, Inspector Desai translating. “I swear to you.” He raised his open right hand and placed it stiffly against his nose and forehead, thumbtip to nosetip, like a vertical salute.

Bob Arno shows pickpocket video to VT Police

Before the battered thief was brought in, the Inspector wanted to be certain that he wouldn’t be glorified in the press, nor made fun of by us. The man had received the beating he deserved, Desai said. His huge curled mustache held the shadow of a smile. While we waited, he dictated a memo to an assistant and sent another running for masala chai, spiced milky tea. Pigeon feathers swirled on the floor in a mini whirlwind.

Rahul was wheeled in and parked beside Bob. A posse of police and medical staff stood behind his rusty throne like male ladies-in-waiting. After promising truth, Rahul looked back and forth between Bob and the Inspector with alert eyes, and answered without hesitation.

He steals only on trains at the passengers’ moments of boarding or alighting, he explained. Never on buses. His only victims are wealthy businessmen, easily identifiable by the size of their bellies and grooming of their mustaches. He tapped his own thin mustache and sunken belly, indicating the local signifiers of affluence. All the police recognize Rahul and his gang. Therefore, they usually commit their thefts a station or two away from Central Station. He was caught this time because he’d been drinking a little and his reflexes were slow. He was sloppy. It was a bad mistake. He pressed his broken ribs and grimaced.

Rahul works with a sliver of razor blade, which he hides in his mouth between cheek and lower gum. Using a broken match stick, he demonstrated how quickly he can manipulate the blade. With it, he slices open the satchels of affluent businessmen on trains while a partner holds a newspaper or canvas bag at the chest or neck of the victim, preventing his seeing.

“Show me,” Bob said, coming around Rahul and squatting beside him. Rahul was handed a newspaper and then demonstrated how quickly he could open a bag beneath the shield of the paper.

This is done while boarding or exiting trains so crowded that people can barely turn their heads, Rahul and the Inspector explained.

“Do you ever cut pockets with the blade?” Bob asked.

“No, only bags. But I know others who cut pockets. Two brothers, they always work together.”

“I want to talk to them. Where can I find them?” Desai asked.

“I don’t know,” Rahul said. He seemed afraid for a moment.

“Last question,” Bob said. “What will you do when you’re fifty?”

A Mumbai taxi

“I have a taxi medallion and badge. If I get the chance, I would like to ply the taxi on the road.” He paused. “But I do not think I will get the chance.”

It’s possible that Rahul works under an Indian mafia. Neither he nor the inspector suggested this, but other Indians who analyzed portions of this interview on video thought it was likely.

“Where there is big money there is mafia,” an Indian working in the security business told me. “Your pickpocket, he was afraid to talk about other thieves he knows. He didn’t want to tell the police inspector. And as to driving a taxi, probably the mafia will never let him quit the steal business. Your pickpocket will continue his work on the trains, I believe.”

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams

Chapter Five: Rip-offs: Introducing…the Opportunist

Related: Street crime in Mumbai today

I'm not ready to out "JD" completely.

All this hearsay, lately, about pickpockets onboard airplanes. Even a celebrity-son helped himself to sleeping passengers’ valuables. Here’s what a thief told me, in pickpocket-lingo:

The Stick, the Shade, and the Wire

“JD” an American whiz player, travels to all the top sporting events in the United States. His favorite tool is a garment bag which he calls his shade, a prop to hide his theft of a sting, or a wallet. Dressed in a suit from the wardrobe he’s proud of, he flies to his destination penniless. He described his recent trip to Las Vegas.

“I made $900 coming out of the airport. When the plane lands, I start work. I got to get my money to get out of McCarran airport. Play strictly on skill, that’s how I play—on the plane. Yeah, plane lands, people have their arms up getting their bags. See my man, get up on him, pow, I spank him, off the front leg.

“It was a pappy—a man—right? He got a sting—a wallet—in the front slide, but he also got cash. I played this for his credit card. I got a guy with me we call a writer. He writes the work, writes the spreads. He’s a stick—what you call a stall, what we call a stickman writer. He’s stick and shade. I do the wire. The wire is the one who takes. We split up when we get on the plane, he gets in the back and I get in the front.

“Right now, I can go to McCarran airport and go to baggage claim and beat some stings. Because security is, evidently, lax, and the people are rushing to get their bags, and the bags are coming off the trolley, and I got my garment bag ….

“And when he’s stooping down to get his luggage— ‘Oh, is that mine, sir?’ Shake him up. ‘Oh, is this mine? It looks like mine.’ If you’re moving, and I got someone with me, and you’re in the airport, I’m going to play you. If I feel like I can work you I’m going to play you.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Three: Getting There—With all your Marbles

Airborne Victim

“Kayla,” a 15-year-old girl, told me how her wallet was stolen on a cross-country flight. Her mother and sister supported Kayla’s story. The thief was a 35ish woman sitting next to her. In the middle of the flight, the woman bent down and pretended to be digging in her purse. But Kayla felt something and looked, and could see that the woman was digging in her (Kayla’s) purse.

Kayla said she was too scared to say anything. The woman got up and went to the bathroom. Kayla checked her purse and found that her wallet was gone. She told her mother. Then she and her mother told a flight attendant. The flight attendant found the wallet in the bathroom, missing only Kayla’s cash. Kayla was still too afraid to say anything to the thief. When the plane landed, the woman just left.

Take Precautions

Is theft on planes a risk worth worrying about? I don’t think so. Then again, if you’re the unlucky victim of a flying filcher, you’ll be plenty pissed. If you sleep, that tiny possibility is there. Even if you don’t sleep, do you know what’s being rummaged above your head? On some planes, a thief could reach behind his feet to access the bag under his seat.

What to do? Just make it more difficult for the casual thief. Bury your valuables within your bags. Use little locks on your carry-ons. Put your bags in the bin zipper down, or with the opening to the back of the bin. (Yeah, I know, wheels in first, they say.) Use the bin across from you, so you have a chance of looking if someone opens it.

Do I do all those things? Nope. But I do enough to make my stuff more difficult to access than the next person’s.

If you’re a heavy sleeper, or like to close your eyes and disappear under earphones, as I do, there’s not much you can do short of sitting on your stuff. Still, I’d be more concerned at a sporting event or concert, than aboard an airplane. JD makes a great living stealing wallets from people in crowds. And he’s still out there.

Mdubuzi, a pickpocket in Durban, South Africa, stole a wallet from a woman watching a car race. Bob stole it from Mdubuzi and returned it to the victim.

“We do what you do,” Bob told the poker-faced pickpocket. “Same job.”

Looking at his blank expression, it wasn’t clear that he understood. Perhaps he didn’t speak English. If he did understand, his mind must have been racing. What could be worse for a pickpocket than being confronted by a stranger? Even one who claims to be a colleague.

“Here, I’ll show you.” Bob put his hand on the young man’s shoulder, dipped into the man’s pants pocket, and extracted a woman’s wallet—the same one we’d just watched—and filmed—the pickpocket snag from someone’s handbag.

Bob opened the wallet. There was no money in it. The pickpocket watched in stunned silence as Bob turned away with it.

“Excuse me, madam. Is this yours?” Bob offered the empty wallet to the victim who still stood just a few yards away, engaged in the spectacle she’d come to witness. The woman accepted the wallet gratefully, but puzzled. She hadn’t realized it was missing.

“You see?” Bob asked, returning to the pickpocket. “Same job. You understand?”

“I understand.” the young man said. Clearly, he didn’t know what was coming. Best to say little, he seemed to think. Speak only when questioned.

It was our first visit to Durban in many years. The climate had changed drastically since the abolishment of apartheid and the switch in governments. Violent crime in South Africa was frighteningly high now, to the extent that the U.S. State Department, as well as Britain’s and Australia’s governments, recommended that business travelers to the country employ armed bodyguards.

Visitors were warned to stay in their hotels after dark and use extreme caution at all times.

Mdubuzi uses stealth to steal from women’s purses, his forte.

It was a warm spring Sunday when Bob and I landed in Durban’s city center. We had intended to wander through the outdoor market when our attention was drawn to a huge crowd on the edge of Central Park. Though we couldn’t see beyond the spectators, roaring engines soon informed us that they were watching car races. We hung back a bit and studied the rapt audience.

“Watch those three,” Bob said, and I followed his eyes. “Watch their body language.”

Within two minutes of our arrival, our eyes were fixed on a trio of suspicious characters. These three did not strain to look over or between the heads of the crowd. They seemed to be as interested in car races as Bob and I were. Instead, they looked at the backs of the spectators. They lingered and loitered a few minutes, then moved on and looked for new opportunities among new backsides.

Engines roared and tires squealed. Loudspeakers blared some exciting results. One of the young men had a plastic shopping bag in his hand; as in fact, many people did. But his bag was folded flat in half twice, which gave it a bit of firmness. It could have contained a greeting card, or a small pad of paper. On closer inspection, I noticed the red advertising copy printed on the bag was worn off to the point of illegibility. The folded bag must have been held in a sweaty grip for hours.

Three pickpockets surround a woman spectator at a car race.

The three men positioned themselves around a woman whose purse stuck out behind her. One man moved in on each side of the woman, blocking her purse from the views of anyone to her sides. The third man slowly crowded into the woman from behind, stretching his neck as if trying to watch the race. Slowly, slowly, his left hand raised the flattened bag to the purse, where his right hand crept up to meet it. Then, with the plastic bag as a shield and his right hand poised above the purse, he gave the woman a little jostle. A gentle, natural jostle, appropriate for a tightly crowded audience engrossed in vicarious thrills. His skinny elbow raised and lowered then, and Bob and I caught a quick glimpse of brown leather before it was folded into the flattened bag and plunged into the thief’s deep pants pocket.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Five: Rip-offs: Introducing… The Opportunist

I’m mortified to remember the time I refused to shake hands with an Egyptian.

It’s a sad commentary on the state of the world when one must look at every stranger with distrustful eyes, and in some ways it defeats the whole purpose of leisure travel. Spectacular landscapes, ruins, markets, shops, and food are only the skin of a culture. Its people are its core. Around the world people are attracted to people; locals are warm and welcoming to travelers, and swell with national pride. In many countries, to refuse a gift is to insult your host. In some countries, insulting your host is provocative indeed.

After a long hot morning interviewing the Cairo police, we returned to our hotel to wash up. We then intended to visit the American Express office at the Nile Hilton, and from there, we’d hunt down an excellent Egyptian lunch at the Khan el Khalili Bazaar. Refreshed, we made our way through thick air, deafening noise, and teeming crowds to the 6th of October Bridge, which spans the Nile.

Policemen at attention stood the length of the bridge, perfectly spaced every thirty feet, rigid and regular as toy soldiers. They were armed, however, like real soldiers. I asked an important-looking officer who appeared to be supervising the formation. “Is it always like this? Are there this many officers every day?” No, President Mubarak is coming, he said. At the end of the bridge we paused and looked up to locate the Nile Hilton.

“You can’t cross the street here,” a friendly local volunteered. “If you try, the police will only stop you. Our president is coming, you see.” He was curly-headed, short, chubby, and a bit rough.

“How do we get across to the Hilton?” Bob asked.

“You must use the underpass. Come, I’ll show you.” As we turned, the entry to the underpass became obvious. We thanked the man, but he wasn’t finished with us.

“Hello,” he kept saying. “How are you? Where are you from? You like Cairo?” He offered his hand, and Bob shook it politely as the three of us walked toward the underpass.

“Lady, what’s your name?”

“Bambi,” I said, walking ahead. I smiled at him over my shoulder, hoping he’d find me friendly but in a hurry. I had no wish to offend him, but I am not fond of shaking hands with any stranger on the street.

“Hello!” he persisted. I increased my pace slightly. That turned out to be an unwise move; thoughtless and undiplomatic.

“You don’t want to shake hands with an Egyptian? I am your host! Do you think I’m dirty?”

“My wife has a cold,” Bob lied, “she doesn’t want you to get it.”

“Perhaps she doesn’t like Egyptians! What kind of visitors are you!”

I felt terrible by then, and regretted my rude and tactless behavior when I should have been on my best. But now I was concerned about the man’s escalating verbal assault. He was still walking with us and, as the underground passage loomed ahead, the chicken in me pecked holes in my nerves. I should have turned and apologized. Instead, I sped up.

I heard Bob behind me, trying to explain the transference of germs from hand to hand to mouth and the Cairene not getting it. As I entered the tunnel, Bob not far behind, the agitated man gave up and dropped us. I was relieved and ashamed at the same time.

Later, we unwound in a barely-lit alcove of the cave-like back of the elegant Khan El Khalili Restaurant. The front of the restaurant, called the Naguib Mahfouz Coffee Shop for the Nobel Prize-winning novelist, was all about unwinding. Customers slouched among pillows sucking on hookahs, dark coffee and sweet smoke scented the room, narrow shafts of harsh sunlight illuminated the thick swirling air, and waterpipes burbled like aquariums.

In the back it was quiet, private, and dramatically lit. Over little plates of olives, babaganoush, hummus, and flat bread, we reflected on the encounter. It could have gotten out of hand; we were lucky. But why had I behaved so badly? What had repelled me from the one-man welcome committee? Was I just too street-smart, smelling a scam? Had years of thief-patrol put me off all humanity?

No, I lacked any credible excuse. I had just washed, was on my way to eating lunch with my hands, and just plain didn’t want to shake hands. Shame on me. I felt miserable, but allowed myself to be soothed by the atmosphere and luscious meal.

Encounters with locals can offer the deepest, longest-lasting memories of a trip. But when cultures collide, sensitivity and caution must be in balance. Judgment is critical, but how can we determine what our own behavior should be, with little understanding of foreign sentiment? A majority of Americans, cocooned as we are in our huge world of a nation, have a myopian global perspective, as limited as that of an Amazonian tribesman or a Mongolian herder. Our collective ignorance of political issues stuns smaller nations, which can’t afford to know only their own business.

Our naiveté may occasionally lead to confrontations such as mine with the Egyptian. It can also foster dangerous hostility, and it allows us to walk into scams, swindles, and set-ups.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Three: Getting There—With all your Marbles

Atul and Smriti Shah experienced it first-hand. “It happened during the night,” they concluded. “The entire compartment was sprayed with some sort of gas that knocked us out. Then our suitcase was slowly extracted from under our seat, the lock twisted loose and, with all the time in the world, the suitcase was looted.”

Atul and Smriti live with their small daughters in Mumbai, India, where railway is the customary way to crisscross the country. For the occasion of a relative’s marriage, the family traveled to the town of Kanpur, in Uttar Pradesh. As tradition dictates, they brought along their finest clothes and jewelry to wear to the many matrimonial celebrations and ceremonies. As a high-caste woman from a wealthy family, now married to a successful businessman, Smriti carried an enviable display of gold and diamonds.

“She had diamonds on her fingers and in her nose and ears,” Atul explained with pride, “and gold bangles and necklaces. Also, she wore the good-luck vermilion mark on her forehead that Indians always wear when traveling away from home.”

After the wedding and family visits, the Shahs boarded the train for the twenty-hour journey home. They had one suitcase, but it was a large one: fifty kilos, Atul estimated. It contained all the family’s finery, including Smriti’s jewelry, and had a small padlock on the zipper tabs. Atul forced the suitcase under Smriti’s seat in the train compartment, where it was tightly lodged. They did not open the suitcase for the duration of the journey.

The Shahs boarded in the evening, had a meal packed by Smriti’s mother, and settled down for the night.

“The strange thing is that none of us woke up during the night,” Smriti told me. “Even the children slept the night through, and they never do.”

She remembers a vague sensation of bitterness in her mouth during the night, then the desire for water. But she remembers too the lethargy she felt, the heaviness of her limbs.

Food- and drink-drugging has long been a problem on trains, but could knockout gas really be in a thief’s arsenal? In my early research, doctors had doubted the likelihood of a thief acquiring the right gas and the victims not waking from the smell. I went back to the doctors and this time they all agreed it could happen. Chloroform is often used in primitive surgical conditions and has no smell at all, some said. An anesthesiologist mentioned Halothane, which would be readily available from any surgical facility or veterinarian. Halothane has a slight odor but not enough to wake an already-sleeping person.

“Within twenty or thirty minutes,” Dr. Jared Kniffen told me, “someone could be in a deep enough sleep so that you could enter the room without his awareness. The danger of this is you could kill someone if too much were used. There’s a second possibility—a gas called Cevoflurane. It’s odorless, but much more difficult to obtain.”

But wouldn’t the robber himself be knocked out? I asked.

“There are ways to avoid that,” Dr. Kniffen said. “A certain travel supply house sells a smoke hood that gives twenty minutes of oxygen.” It’s meant for use in escaping from a burning building, but a clever thief might employ one for another use.

It sounds too sophisticated to me, too troublesome and risky. But if the reward were a treasure chest like Smriti Shah’s, it must be worth one thousand times the risk of simply snagging a laptop from a business traveler.

Despite the Shahs’ conviction, gassing on an overnight train is only a remote risk; my paranoid apprehension on our journey to Prague was out of proportion. Breaking into and stealing from compartments is a real risk though, and so is food- and drink-drugging. Nembitol, scopolamine, and benzodiazepine are the drugs most commonly slipped into food or drink, but only after the thief builds trust and confidence with the mark.

This is Part 3 of 3.   — Part 1. —  Part 2

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Three: Getting There—With all your Marbles

Overnight train travel requires watchfulness. Stations can be seedy. They’re open and available to anyone, with or without tickets. They attract a varied population of travelers and non-travelers alike. Vigilance is vital.

Stations with the biggest theft problems are those that are connected to, or nearby, bus or subway stations, which are often hangouts for gangs, drug dealers, and other undesirables. Thieves are able to loiter unchallenged within the stations, without attracting attention. Then they can take advantage of congestion for cover and easy escape.

Train stations and daytime journeys are covered in Chapter Six [of my book, Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams]. Here, I’ll discuss overnight trips. Certainly not all overnight trains carry such risks as the following, which are surely worst cases. They’re a popular and logical mode of travel, not to be dismissed. If you plan well, you make the most of your vacation days, see a bit of countryside, meet some other interesting travelers, and save the expense of a hotel night.

My Swedish friends called me “exotic” because I had never been on an overnight train. It’s easy to find a European who has never been on an airplane, they told me, but everyone’s been on an overnight train. So when Bob and I found ourselves in Venice, Italy, ready to visit Prague in the Czech Republic, we decided to go by rail, overnight.

We boarded in late evening, and it seemed we would encounter our first train scam immediately. A large, slobbish, dreary man blocked the aisle and demanded our tickets.

“Tickets!”

He wore baggy black pants and a soggy white shirt. Nothing official, no monogram, badge, cap, embroidery, name tag, nothing to identify him. Yet, as his bulk impeded our path, we had no choice but to give him our tickets. He pointed to our reserved compartment. Thankfully, he didn’t demand money. But he didn’t return our tickets, either.

We could have been assigned to an Italian-owned wagon, or an Austrian one, possibly even a Swiss one. But we got a wagon owned and maintained by the Czech Railroad. We entered our dismal compartment and tallied up the security risks.

First though, what happened to our tickets? Bob went to find the big sour slob who had confiscated them. I could just imagine the moment a uniformed conductor would come to punch our tickets.

“But… but… we’ve already given them to the conductor!” we’d say.

“What conductor?”

“The man in black pants!”

“No tickets, no travel! Get off the train!”

Bob and the Czech ticket-taker argued in mutually exclusive languages. Bob returned without the tickets. We had nothing, not even a receipt. My turn. I tried another way. I found a Czech lady who explained: the man is our “attendant.” He keeps the tickets to show officials at border crossings. He’ll wake us in the morning, and will return the tickets then.

Okay.

Back in our dusty quarters we assessed the realistic hazards and dismissed the rest. We would not, for example, worry about knock-out gas being snuck under our door as a precursor to robbery. Bob said we wouldn’t worry about it. I merely insisted we keep the window open. Where, then, shall we put our luggage? Under the window is the obvious place, but not if we leave it open. The only other possibility would block the door.

Block the door.

We had not brought anything suitable to secure the door, but its flimsy chain would be enough. Bob said so.

I couldn’t sleep.

The gentle rocking I had imagined would seduce me to slumber was instead a rude awakening. It was jerky and ruthless, like being aroused by an earthquake. If I slept, I could be rolled like a drunk and never parse the violence of the assault from the brutality of the jolting train.

The noise from the open window was deafening. The rhythmic, metallic percussion of the tracks combined with a menagerie of whistles, screeches, and shrieks when we stopped at stations and borders. It was torment, but I wouldn’t shut the window.

Just a few days before, we had interviewed a railway police officer in Milan whose detail was theft. He claimed that most, if not all, the “gassing” tales are made up by victims too embarrassed to admit that they had slept through their own robberies. I had read an interview of a young Czech train thief who described exactly how he enters a compartment, watches his sleeping victim, slices open the victim’s pocket, and lets the wallet drop into his hand. Without gas or drugs. That sounded unbelievable to me; impossible. Surely the victim would awaken? But having experienced the dreadful noise and ceaseless motion of an unair-conditioned overnight train, I realize how horribly possible it is.

This is Part 2 of 3.   —  Part 1.   —  Part 3

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Three: Getting There—With all your Marbles