My Swedish brother-in-law came to visit us in Las Vegas. While Bob and I were off on a trip, he decided to upgrade our garden. He drove our car to the local nursery to buy some plants. As he approached the nursery, driving slowly, the car was suddenly rushed by a gang of shouting Mexicans. My brother-in-law went cold, he told us later: cold sweat, pounding heart, racing thoughts. The Mexicans were all shouting as they surrounded the car. “If I stop, it’s all over,” my brother-in-law thought, “I’ll lose the car.” So he inched forward, knuckles white on the wheel, staring straight ahead.
The Mexicans fell back and my brother-in-law turned into the nursery, parking safely. He leaned back and let out a huge breath, wondering how this could happen, or almost happen, in Las Vegas, in broad daylight, in a busy street. He sat in the car for a few minutes, gathering his composure. As another car approached the nursery, he watched the scene repeat itself from a comfortable distance, and realized that these were men seeking work. Choose me!, they must have been shouting, in competition with each other. Let me dig your hole!
He now goes into hysterics remembering his misinterpretation of the incident.
It’s not for nothing that my brother-in-law calls himself a Swedish Okie and a country bumpkin. This is the man we brought to a Chinese restaurant once, who scrunched up his face and pulled “some trash” out of his mouth when eating a fortune cookie.
Who’s looking at you when you buy a coffee? It’s creepy, when you know all they can see.
At the World Game Protection Conference in Las Vegas earlier this year, where Bob was a keynote speaker, I saw SmartConnect‘s live demo of actual video surveillance. The client we spied on was a coffee chain store at McCarren Airport. No surprise that I saw the employees and customers, but I also saw an image of each customer’s itemized receipt—as it was generated. I could see all stats pertaining to each transaction in real time, as if I were there. Did the cashier apply an employee discount to the sale? Did she leave the cash drawer open for more than x seconds? Just how many employee discounts did that cashier register today, anyway?
It was all there, laid out on one big screen, along with multiple video images of the employees and customers as they interacted. On a giant plasma display with almost life-size images, it truly felt like peeking over the shoulder of the employees.
In a quick visit to Rome last month, Bob and I found it pretty quiet on the streets, theft-wise. Granted, we only spent a few hours on the prowl, but given our 15 years experience thiefhunting in Rome, we know where to look. We usually find an eclectic mix of Italian, Roma, North African, and East European thieves, plus many we don’t speak to, many who won’t tell, and many who lie.
On this visit, we spent at least half an hour shadowing a mixed-gender threesome halfheartedly preying. As they trudged along the tourist trail, one of their members entered each souvenir shop along the way and stood among the customers. Another spent time among the postcard stands. They were an extraordinarily scruffy group, whose appearance certainly limits their access and proximity to targets. After a lethargic effort, they disbanded at a bus stop. We engaged two of them as they scattered, and learned that they were Polish.
Other than this group, we saw very few “suspects” in the Metro, on Bus 64, hanging around at the usual favorite bus stops, or on the streets. Termini, the main train station, was littered with dodgy characters, as usual, but we didn’t linger, preferring to survey the scene outside the station.
Are Italians finally fed up enough to do something about crime? At least crime committed by immigrants, it seems. A couple of telling surveys reported in The Guardian hint to a new, anti-immigrant climate in Italy, and especially anti-Gypsy.
81% of Italian respondents said they found all Gypsies, Romanian or not, “barely likeable or not likeable at all”, a greater number than the 64% who said they felt the same way about non-Gypsy Romanians.
and
Romanians were among the 268 immigrants rounded up in a nationwide police crackdown on prostitution and drug dealing this week, after new prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s likening of foreign criminals to “an army of evil”.
Word has been out on the street for some time. “Jaga” and Ana, a Romanian pickpocket couple we interviewed at length in Rome in 2003, told us they were planning to move to Spain, where it is easier to live and to conduct their business. They are not the only thieves to express this sentiment, which helps explain why Spain has such a preponderance of pickpockets.
Pisa, too, was empty of the sticky-fingered women and children we usually find at the train station, bus station, and all around the Piazza del Duomo. Locals there said they had noticed the pickpockets’ disappearance about a month ago.
But just when we thought Italy might be cracking down on crime, we heard last month’s terrible story of the American couple served drugged cappuccino in a Rome train station, where they were then robbed. Upon awaking, the man stumbled onto the tracks and was killed by a train. The article continues:
Gangs using narcotic spray to carry out train robberies are also on the rise in Italy, police said. The gangs board sleeper trains and drug passengers in couchettes before hopping off at stations with valuables.
I tend to think the crime lull we sensed in our short survey of Rome’s previous hot spots was actually an anomaly. Or the balloon has been squeezed and the thieves are just elsewhere. I hope that we soon find another opportunity to re-investigate Rome.
Sadly, though, porcini season will be over by our next visit. There is nothing like porcini pizza, especially in Pisa.
“Bambi? In Las Vegas? Really? Are you a stripper? [Guffaw.]”
If your name is Bambi and you live in Las Vegas, these, apparently, are fair questions. I get them all the time. Sometimes they don’t ask, they just blacklist my email address. Bambi with a Vegas IP address could only be a certain you-know-what.
It’s no wonder, really: the Las Vegas phonebook has 110 pages of entertainers. And you know what I mean by entertainers. The naughty, discrete, spicy, barely legal, and exotic kind. They’re Swedish, Russian, Swiss, Vietnamese (twins!), Japanese, Korean, Thai, French, and Chinese. They’re sweet, new in town, and fiery. For years, my name was on the back of taxi cabs all over town, lasciviously illustrated with promises of bounty.
Being blacklisted is a pain but easily correctable. I communicate with quite a few police departments, and they’re the biggest offenders. So I do a fair bit of resending, while feeling like an illicit trifle, a forbidden floozy trying to regain her honor.
Here’s how introductions usually go:
Man: Really, Bambi? [[heh-heh] Like the deer? Me: Yeah, right. Man: And you live in Las Vegas? Are you a dancer? [read: stripper.]
or:
Woman: Bambi, cute. Is that your real name? Me: It is, yes. Woman: Where’s Thumper? [ha-ha] Just kidding.
According to my parents, I was not named after the Disney character, the one in the film made from Felix Salten’s 1923 book, Bambi, a Life in the Woods. My parents insist their inspiration was Bambi Lynn, a dancer best known for her appearance in the 1955 film Oklahoma!. But who was she named for?
As a kid, I had a few nicknames I dare not resurrect. None pleased or bothered me. None lingered, probably because I moved so many times. One move had me in a new school at the start of second grade. The teacher asked if anyone had a nickname or middle name she and the class should use. Aha, I thought, I do, and raised my hand. Lyn, I said. Sure, said the teacher. And all was well until I brought home my first paper. My mother said What’s this? That’s not the name we gave you! It was a meek and humiliated little girl who had to change her name in front of everybody the next day. Probably scarred me for life. Or made me shoulder my burden and bear it.
Two years ago, I was interviewed on television by a Thai woman named Flower. Bambi is Flower’s guest today. Sounds too cute. Most people probably switched channels at that point.
I think a lot about names, how people grow into them, or don’t; how people modify them, or don’t; the effect they have on the bearer and others; the significance or insignificance of them. And how people carry their own names. What they are called vs. what they like to be called.
Many people feel compelled to crack a joke about my name when they meet me. They think they’re being original. I haven’t heard a new one in decades. I don’t have any good comebacks, either. Have any suggestions? I realize how silly it might feel to use my name. I’ve known women named Ditty, Cheery, Bunny, and Honey, and I’ve cringed using their names. Then I remember that I have a toy name, too. A cartoon name.
I’m against middle names, like mine and my sisters’, chosen only for their sound. I like them to have some importance or meaning. I’ve convinced more than one woman to give her maiden name to her child as a middle name.
I like my last name. Not too common but still ordinary; easy to spell and pronounce around the world. A relief after my exotic first name. My mother and father were both Vincents, so I’m double-strength. Of course I couldn’t dump it for marriage. (Somehow, my three sisters had no problem ditching it, though.)
Despite the sound of this rant, I’m not complaining. I wouldn’t like a boring name like Linda or Kathy (sorry Linda and Kathy), or a funny name like Gladys (Happy-bottom). I’ve been amused by many a name: women named Wonder, Spratley, Greer, and Phelps. In South Africa, I knew a man named Lastborn and a woman named Surprise (Lastborn’s younger sister?). Having a name that amuses others is not so bad. Even I am amused when someone forgets my name. Something I imagine is so shiny and neon-colored and remarkable can be vin-ordinaire to some.
I can thank the Parsis for my passion for photojournalism.
Another man might have turned away, but when I saw a vulture picking the limbs of a dead child, I raised my camera. Perhaps that says more about me than I should reveal.
Instead of burning their dead and feeding the ashes to the River Ganges as Hindus do, Parsis lay the bodies of their dead on a grid suspended over a high tower. To attract vultures to the burial tower, corpses are smeared with rancid animal fat. The scavenger birds pick away the flesh and the cleaned bones then fall onto the earth, lime, and charcoal floor of the tower to decompose into the soil. How I came to witness this alien rite was through the same set of circumstances that so profoundly impacted my career.
At twenty I hadn’t yet decided whether to become an entertainer or a photographer. My true passion was travel, and the more off-beat and distant the destination, the better. To fund my expeditions, I took engagements as a performer for four to six weeks in faraway countries, and at the end of the gigs I would trek into surrounding villages and countryside.
Performing in the Far East in the sixties gave me a unique opportunity to visit cities that I otherwise would never have had a chance to visit for such extended periods. While my craving for photojournalistic excitement was supported by my show income, I made an effort to meet local authorities and make the right contacts intending to pursue photojournalism with a bent toward the absurd.
Bob Arno’s path to pickpocketing
Even way back then my show was unusual—pickpocketing had never been seen as entertainment. It was my ticket to the exotic destinations most people only dream of. And on my journeys I witnessed, sometimes inadvertently, headline news. Neither ordinary tourists nor visiting journalists could have had such easy access to behind-the-scenes briefings. For I was tied to the U.S. Military.
Bob Arno, 24
I had always had a strange desire to capture macabre images with a camera. It started as a hobby, then became a semi-profession during my first journey to Asia. In 1961 I toured Pakistan, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Japan as an inexperienced entertainer. I augmented my performance salary by taking freelance photography assignments in locations where Western photographers were still a bit of a rarity.
The world was hungry for unusual stories from Asia then. As a young and raw journalist with little comprehension of the underlying political issues of the area, I came face to face with the dramatic events of the day. Being in the right place at the right time was at the heart of my earliest photojournalistic adventures.
With the beginning of the war in Vietnam, U.S. forces were building steadily in the Far East. These were the darkest years of the Cold War and the fear was of China’s involvement in the Indo-Chinese conflict. Everyone was concerned about the war escalating and spilling over into the Philippines, Thailand, and Korea. The large U.S. bases in the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Okinawa, and Japan all needed entertainment for the troops.
Most of my performance engagements then were for these American soldiers. My comedy pickpocketing was new and different and audience participation was always a hit. I had long contracts on the military bases, as well as in the civilian clubs—camouflaged girlie-joints, really—which attracted the soldiers. It was this environment which fueled my taste for absurd and offbeat news stories.
Photographers in those early years of the conflict hung out together in the hotel bars of Saigon. That’s how I met Larry Burrows, a British war-journalist who worked for Life magazine and was one of the most-awarded photographers to come out of the Vietnam war. Burrows helped me gain contacts in Saigon, both with the American military command and with the opposing factors. Without leads and the contacts you wouldn’t get “the story.”
It was because of Larry Burrows that I was one of only five photographers in Saigon who were privy to the intelligence-leak that a monk was about to commit suicide. An immolation was to occur in the early hours of June 11, 1963, at a compound outside Saigon in front of a few select journalists. The Bhuddist leaders orchestrating the sacrifice schemed that the global reaction to the front-page photos of the monk setting himself on fire would create an anti-war movement. The goal was to speed up peace negotiations.
At three in the morning, we photographers were rushed from the hotel out to the compound. The unlucky monk who had been selected for the sacrifice had already been drugged into a semi-comatose state and sat on the ground. As soon as the media were ready with their cameras, other monks poured petrol over the “victim,” and he was then set alight. We let our Nikon motordrives spin throughout the ordeal and the resulting pictures, mine included, created enormous impact and news coverage in all major newspapers around the world.
[EDIT 1/2/13: See comments below for Bob Arno’s elucidation on this experience.]
My first photo essay was from Pakistan where I shot the story on the Parsis and their infamous Towers of Silence. Their disposal of the dead isn’t so gruesome when you understand their belief in preserving the purity of fire, water, earth, and air. So as not to pollute these elements, they will not burn, bury, or sink their dead. Still, mine were morbid photos by an immature photographer. It wasn’t the historical perspective of the burial rituals which sold the story, but the stark and grisly images of vultures ripping limbs from human corpses.
In similar stark but shallow style, I photographed Hindu cremations at the burning ghats in Benares on the Ganges River, morning bathing rituals in the Ganges in Calcutta, opium dens in northern Thailand, the Bridge at River Kwaii, faith healers in the Philippines, and leper colonies in India.
One particular photo project had a strong impact on my career path. The story was on beggars and pickpockets accosting foreign visitors in Karachi. This was my introduction to a cynical distraction method based on sympathy and compassion. The pickpockets were lepers, and they were exploiting pity for profit.
In the early sixties leprosy was still a serious threat to the populations of India and Pakistan. It was common to see sufferers in various stages of deterioration roaming the streets of Karachi, Calcutta, Bombay, and New Delhi. Banding together, they often surrounded Western visitors coming out of banks, hotels, and churches. The sight of an outstretched hand with missing or rotting fingers usually caused people to react with horror and drop some coins, if for no other reason to get the infected limbs to go away. Compassion and revulsion metamorphosed into currency. The ploy was effective, diabolical, and unique to Pakistan and the Indian subcontinent.
My story showed a team of lepers who specialized in pickpocketing under the guise of begging. While one tugged at the left side of the mark and held out his diseased hand for baksheesh, his accomplice on the mark’s right fanned—softly felt for the wallet. When the victim looked left, aghast at the touch of such ravaged hands, his reaction would be a sudden jerk to the right to get away from the loathsome encounter. The partner on the right would lift his wallet in that moment of abrupt contact.
This was the most primitive of survival instincts, where rules of civility, shame, and respect didn’t apply. Just raw confrontation between the haves and the have-nots. I was only 22 years old when I first witnessed this subterfuge, and I was both stunned and fascinated. Stunned at the callousness of using the primeval emotion, fear, to accomplish distraction. Fascinated by the realization that there were people so desperate they would go to any extent to find money to survive for the next couple of days. It was a rude awakening for a youth raised in the privileged shelter of socialist Sweden.
Watching this base encounter is what inspired my lifelong effort to document, and to unravel, the mind-games which nearly always attend pickpocketing. I was intrigued by the fact that wit was as much a part of it as was technique. This is what challenged me to explore the criminal mind. Pickpocketing is not an activity that one only practices now and then. It’s a daily routine performed several times in a fairly short time span. It’s an intense crime based on dexterity and, equally important, on psychological analysis of the opponent. A good pickpocket must be able to read many signals and make an instant decision on whether to go for the poke or wait for a better opportunity.
I was also intrigued, in those early years, by the cleverness of the set-up. Although the theatrical theft of a wallet on stage is entirely different from lifting one in the street, the principles of distraction are the same. By studying the real thieves, I realized I could incorporate their techniques into my performance. I began a fanatical collection of stratagems, always on the lookout for the clever, devious, cunning, slick, duplicitous, ingenious, innovative, inventive, and creative new trick.
Much later in my career, exactly thirty years later, I would find that the lepers’ technique—begging on one side of a victim, pickpocketing on the other—was nearly identical to the methods used by thieving gangs in southern Europe today.
Another pivotal moment arrived for me that same year in India when I realized that gangs of beggars and pickpockets usually worked under controlling leaders. Not protectors or father-figures to homeless children, these leaders were brutal mutilators who intentionally crippled children in order to make them better beggars, allotted them territories, and demanded daily payments from them. My discovery of this grim reality was the spark that fired my quest to find, understand, and expose the manipulators’ deception.
From Indian beggars to east European gypsy families to American inner-city street toughs to North African pickpockets to Colombian tricksters, I have always asked this question: how did you learn your trade? Was it passed down within the family? Was it learned in prison? Was destitution the motivator?
For more than forty years a rumor has been whispered among police forces in America that an organized school for pickpockets exists. The School of the Seven Bells is said to graduate a certified pickpocket when he can steal from all the pockets of a man’s suit while it hangs on a mannequin, without ringing little warning bells tied to the clothes. A pickpocket in Cartegena told us that the school is nestled high in the mountains of Colombia. An American cop told us of a variation in Chicago, in which razor blades buried in the suit pockets replace the bells. And yet I have never spoken to a policeman who has succeeded in getting any detail from detained pickpockets about the school. Perhaps it is mere myth. My search continues.
One of the most common questions people ask me after they’ve seen my lecture or one of our documentaries on con games is how I got so interested in tracking criminals. The easy answer is that one thing led to another: stage pickpocketing to observing street thieves to adapting their tricks for the stage. But that denies the force of my own personality in steering my expedition through life. It’s far more difficult to define the eccentric quirk in my psyche that attracted me to deceit, deception, and double-dealing—but always on the right side of law and morality. I am fascinated by confidence games and have the great fortune to enjoy my interest as my career.
In my younger years, my trio of passions—travel, photography, and entertaining—seemed to be in conflict; I thought an inevitable choice would have to be made. Maybe I never grew up. I still travel the world non-stop and I still love it. I’m still deeply involved in photography, though it has mostly evolved into videography. And I am still a full-time entertainer working theaters and private corporate events around the world. I’m having a blast. How lucky can one man be?
What’s more charming than a leisurely break at an outdoor café? Coffee, a beer, a glass of wine, maybe lunch… You chat with friends and watch the people-parade, safe within the lush green walls separating you from the commotion and concerns of traffic and humanity. A cool oasis with a feeling of privacy and exclusivity—at least to some level.
This is where a great number of bag thefts occur, thanks to that false sense of security one naturally gets from the perimeter of potted plants. Thieves may use a special tool or a mangled wire hanger to snag a purse or backpack from between the planters. The use of a tool allows them to pierce your private sphere without setting off your personal alarm system. The most popular sites for this M.O. are right beside a subway entrance or other easy getaway—a gateway to disappear with the swag.
Thankfully, restaurants are beginning to counteract with simple preventative measures. This summer I’ve noticed many café perimeters reinforced with wooden lathing, chicken wire, or bigger planters close together.
Maybe it’s a good idea to change the subject. Too much Barcelona negativity. So how ’bout, instead, I share a sign I saw at Cagliari airport (Sardinia) over the baggage conveyor belt? Faithfully translated from the Italian, with the Italian:
ATTENZIONE AL SEGNALE ACUSTICO LUMINOSO DI PREAVOISO MOVIMENTO MASTRO. PAY ATTENTION TO THE ACOUSTIC AND LUMINOUS SIGNAL FOREWARNING TAPE MOVEMENT.
Barcelona, Spain—They look like any ordinary girls, right? Walking down La Rambla, tossing their long braids, empty hands swinging casually. We only saw this view of them, from the back. So what made us perk up? What raised our antennas?
It was evening. We followed them on La Rambla for a minute or two, then they made a beeline to a trash can on the edge of the street. Peering into the can, the shorter girl reached in and extracted a perfect piece of cardboard. Perfect for her needs, anyway. Bob and I looked at each other. That was all we needed to see. The game was on.
The girls entered the elegant Plaça Reial, a beautiful plaza lined with outdoor cafés. The restaurants are first class, but the plaza’s loiterers can be pretty seedy. The girls entered with practice and purpose, turning to the right and walking quickly around the entire perimeter, right along the occupied tables. Bob and I split, so if one of us was spotted, the other could still film.
They walked around and around, eyes always on the tables, at times stopping to watch a particular table of diners. At some point the short girl gave her cardboard to her partner. She then wandered until she found a new suitable “tool” for herself, what looked like a take-away menu. She returned to the other girl, and they continued scouting.
I shouldn’t really call them girls. They looked young, but these two are women—not that I would hazard a guess of their ages.
When the pair noticed an opportunity, they strolled up to a table full of people. They casually laid their shield tools on the table, then seemed to have a little chat with the diners. Bob and I were both too far away to know what happened. The women lingered a while, then left. Bob or I should have approached the people at the table, but we didn’t. I don’t remember why we didn’t, but now I miss the information we might have gained. In any case, this is classic behavior, which we have seen over and over. Perhaps we were a bit bored with it.
The two prowled about the square, then plopped down on the edge of the fountain. Bob sat opposite them, observing. The fountain scene looked ordinary: people relaxing, admiring, resting, chatting. No one would have suspected the spy vs. spy game in progress. Or—were there more games going on around the fountain? Which other ordinary loungers had ulterior motives? We’d never know.
The women looked tired, bored, and defeated. They made another halfhearted round or two of the plaza, then meandered out. The light was fading. Bob and I, too, were tired, after successive days of beating the pavement. We had dinner reservations. So we left.
We did not see this pair steal, but they appeared to be practicing a laid-back, easy-going version of the M.O. of the boy postcard thief, and similar to Kharem’s style. Although they looked bored and tired, they also seemed to be comfortable and experienced, if not proficient.
These are all expanded uses of the old gypsy cardboard routine, which is still widely in use. Yes, we saw that trick, too. The woman pictured is using cardboard, but just as often, the shield is a piece of newspaper or a map. In Russia, they used puzzles, already put together and glued onto board, which they pretended to offer for sale. They were very, very good with those puzzles, and under them, too.
Barcelona, Spain—We’re walking along Carrer de Ferran, a block off La Rambla. Instead of paying attention to the street scene, I’m looking for a wine shop. Ana is cooking dinner for us and we’re already anticipating the cozy evening. (Dinner turned out to include a sensational artichoke risotto, the cheesy sort that begs for overindulgence.)
So we’re ambling among the eclectic mob on Ferran when half a block ahead I notice a boy unfurl a piece of paper. It could have been a folded brochure or magazine page. He unfurls it with purpose, turns and walks toward me, but on the other side of the street. He’s got my attention. In a few seconds, he reaches the bar directly across the street from me, where people sit behind small tables at the open front. The boy lays his paper on top of a table, waits half a beat, then picks up his paper and scuttles back to the corner where I first noticed him. I see an empty spot on the table.
I grab Bob, who is ten feet ahead of me. “Postcard thief,” I say, “let’s follow!” I don’t mean someone who steals postcards. I’m referring to the method Kharem demonstrated years ago.
Meanwhile, the thief has met a girl on the corner, and he gives her something. We rush to catch up with them, pulling out cameras that had been retired for the evening. The boy and girl turn down an alley. Bob and I trot to get close, then stay ten or so feet behind them as we strategize. I want to confront them right away since I know they just took something. We close in and I come around the girl’s side.
“Give me the wallet,” I say, my hand out. I know she still has it. I know she has no choice. We’re in a plaça now, with lots of people around. I repeat my demand a couple of times.
The girl looks at me like I’m crazy, her fingers to her chest, shoulders hunched. “No have,” she says, or something like that. I put my hand on her. She immediately twirls out of my grasp so I turn to the boy.
“Give it to me,” I say. “I saw you take the wallet.” I hold up my camera. “I have photos,” I lied. “He has video.” I point to Bob, who is filming.
I reach for the boy, and they both take off, full-speed. “Cartaristas!” Bob shouts, mostly as an experiment. His Swedish-accented Spanish reverberates throughout the land. Every head in the plaça turns to look at us. No one seems to look at the fleeing thieves. We let them go.
Backtracking, we return to the bar. The victim is clearly looking for something. He’s only just discovered his loss.
“Is your wallet gone?” I ask him in a breathless rush. “I saw the thief who took it! I’ve just been chasing him!”
“No, my mobile is gone,” he said. “It was right here.”
Shit! If I had demanded they give me the phone I would probably have gotten it back!
Overheard at the reception desk on the Queen Mary 2:
