Ahhh, Tropea! that’s what all the Italians said when they heard that beach town would be the last stop on our journey through the sole of Italy. So beautiful!
The quaint town is high above the beach.
It sure is. So popular is Tropea that the B&B I wanted to stay in was fully booked six weeks before our visit. This is the story of a “sister property” switch, a mean step-sister that does not live up to her sterling siblings, and false claims made by the property owner. There’s also a TripAdvisor mystery, which I’ll save for another post.
Bottom line first: when you go to book a room at Residenza Il Barone in Tropea, don’t be fooled into booking the “apartment”, as I was. Let me tell you about the apartment. Its location is excellent, over a restaurant at Piazza Tre Fontane, a few blocks away from the advertised location. You unlock a heavy door and ascend 14 steep stairs. This brings you into a drab and charmless room with adequate furniture: a dining table and chairs, a sofa, and a sideboard. There’s a mini-kitchen, too, with fridge, sink, and stove.
To use the air-conditioner, you must leave the tall door open a good six inches, letting hot air in.
Poor lighting: In all this space, there is ONE lightbulb. The lamp, hanging over the table, was barely enough for me to do my paperwork.
This is a balcony? Not much wider than one shoe.
No Air conditioning: The apartment claims to have air conditioning. And yes, it had a portable unit on wheels standing in the room, with an extension cord nearby. (See my photo.) It was 85° (see photo), so we turned it on. Cool air came out the front; hot air came out the large exhaust hose, which was loose on the apartment floor—inside! We went to visit the owner, Roberto. Yes, he said, you have to open the door. So we stuck the wide exhaust hose out the door, leaving the tall door open a good six inches—through which came plenty of heat. In actuality: the apartment does NOT have functional air-conditioning.
No Balcony: The apartment claims to have a balcony. It does not. It has a four-inch ledge. (See photo.)
No toiletries: The apartment claims to have “free toiletries.” It does not. Not even a single bar of soap.
14 steep and narrow stairs up to the bed. Do you get up at night? Bathroom’s downstairs!
Climb up to bed: The bed is up a very narrow spiral staircase. (See photos.) There are 14 stairs, each 15” wide. If you are anything larger than slim, if you are elderly, if you have the slightest problem with stairs, you will not make it up. You cannot bring a suitcase upstairs. In fact, it’s difficult to carry anything up the tight stairs. Think about this if you usually get up during the night. The bathroom is downstairs.
Hot sleep: There is no air conditioning upstairs. (Not that there is any downstairs, either…)
Top view of stairs. Imagine it at night.
No breakfast: This is not a B&B. There is no breakfast.
Residenza Il Barone gets consistently good reviews. Watch out if you are routed to this B&B’s apartment as an alternative. It’s not in the same league and is sold with false claims.
Even more strange is TripAdvisor’s response to my review. I’ll write about that next.
It was really hot upstairs. 86°F by our digital thermometer. No air conditioning in the bedroom (not that there’s any downstairs, either.)
This photo is a crime! (yeah, right). Security checkpoint at Nairobi airport.
My sister had the most terrifying experience in Nairobi a few weeks ago.
“As you know,” she said to her jet-setting family members, “flying out of Nairobi there’s a security checkpoint where all passengers have to get out of the cars in the middle of a five-lane road and walk through a security inspection. Meanwhile, the drivers of the cars go through their own check. It’s a confusing mess and takes time to identify your car and driver after you have been cleared.”
That alone freaks me out. I usually refuse to be separated from my luggage, though sometimes during international travel there is simply no choice.
“After we passed through security and were waiting for our car, I started to video the chaos. I should have known better…
“With some difficulty, we finally identified our Uber and got in the car, relieved to be reunited with our stuff. Suddenly, a military police officer with some big-ass machine gun stopped the car and demanded to know why I was videoing the security checkpoint.
“I explained that I had never seen a process like this before and I found it interesting. He replied that it’s a crime to film there and that he is going to charge me with a crime and I will have to go to court on Monday!
“I apologized and said I would delete all photos. He said no—I committed a crime by using a camera at a security checkpoint. He said he is charging me with the crime and I will have to go to court and I will miss my flight.
A still from my sister’s illicit video at the Nairobi airport security checkpoint.
“In the meantime, our driver is whispering to Drew [our nephew] in the front seat that the officer wants 500 shillings ($5) but he was now demanding US $50 to me through the back window. At this point we’d have given him anything. We were even ready to give him our phone! We were also so worried we’d miss our 11 p.m. flight!
“We were literally shaking. I saw my future working in a labor camp in Kenya for the next 12 years!
“We continued to apologize, saying it was a mistake. The officer continued to insist that he had to charge me regardless; he would not let us delete any pictures and we would miss our flight and will have to go to court Monday.
“Of course it was all about the bribe, but when you’re in the moment, in the middle of the situation with a jerk, in a foreign country, you never know how far he’ll take it.
“I asked if I could pay the ‘fine’ now and skip the ‘court’ date so that I could make my plane. He made me delete the video then, and $60.00 later (I wasn’t about to ask him for change!) it was done. But at that moment, I would have paid much more!!!!
“The Uber driver then got out of the car and shook hands with the officer. I’m sure money was exchanged.
“The Nairobi airport security officer put his face in our window again, smiled, and told me to let my friends know what a wonderful time I had in Nairobi!
“And I still had the video, which would stay in my deleted file for a month!”
A wonderful time in Nairobi, duly and publicly reported here!
If you’re even a little interested in the explosion of gypsy beggars across Europe, and particularly in Sweden, you must see this documentary. It’s Bulgarian with English subtitles, in three parts.
Gypsy Beggars in Sweden
“Bulgarian TV host Mirolyuba Benatova interviews bulgarian gypsy beggars in Sweden and asks questions about their income and the criminal aspects of it.”
If you watch the documentary, please tell me in the comments below: Did it change your mind in any way? Did it confirm something you suspected? How was it enlightening?
Suitably spooky site for a psychic school: Arthur Findlay College in Essex, England.
A year ago, psychic swindler Rose Marks was sentenced to more than ten years in federal prison for fleecing clients of her fortune-telling business out of more than $17.8 million. She was 62 years old; she and her family had built a network of psychics, many of whom worked under the professional name Joyce Michael in Ft. Lauderdale and New York City.
One of Rose Marks’s best scams was to “see” the awful (and outrageously convoluted) future of a client, then solicit millions of dollars from the client, bit by bit, in order to perform rituals over the money before returning it. Except, the money was never returned.
At trial, victims testified that Marks “exploited them during vulnerable times in their lives. Victims said the women of the psychic’s family were masterful in their ability to use people’s spiritual or religious beliefs to get them to hand over money and other valuables.”
I always thought psychics had a “gift.”
Turns out, no. They just go to psychic schools. Or seance schools. Or clairvoyant colleges. These institutions have complete curricula of course study in, uh… conning. Courses called Unfoldment into Mediumship, Using Past Life Information in Present Time, Applying Clairvoyant Tools in the Psychic Playground, Trance: How to Sit for its Development, and So You Want to be a Medium are a small sampling from the few psychic schools I surveyed.
Rose Marks is infamous enough to have her own Wikipedia page, and lucky enough to have been trained by her own mother in the Gypsy tradition. She began her psychic career by age nine and later trained her own daughter.
If you don’t have the benefit of maternal training, there are psychic schools. All of them offer comprehensive instruction from beginner to advanced levels.
Psychic Schools
In the class called Stepping into Mediumship at MontClair Metaphysical School in New Jersey, the focus is learning how to “contact someone on the Other Side and to provide proof of their identity, personality and proof of life.”
Proof of life? The “Other Side” means the dead, right? So they’re teaching students how to contact the dead. And they must really teach that—otherwise the school is a sham.
Next, the students are taught how to prove they’ve contacted the correct dead person. Hmmm… mistakes can happen. Kind of like getting your neighbor’s mail in your box. Oops. But it’s the last bit that confuses me most: students are taught how to provide “proof of life.” Of a dead person? Is there life on the “Other Side”? From my perspective then, as an afterlife-nonbeliever, the school teaches how to scam. It is a school of scams, a college of cons, if I comprehend the concept correctly.
Or perhaps I need spiritual help.
Just last month, Psychic Gina was arrested in Fort Collins, Colorado, for bilking $37,000 from a client, with the collusion of her accomplice husband. Psychic Gina Marks is a member of another Marks family’s fortune-telling business; if and how they are related to Rose Marks is unknown.
Who would pay a psychic thousands of dollars for aura-cleansing, curse-lifting, love-finding, or to get through the ordinary difficulties of life? Usually those desperate in the areas of love, loss, health, or career. In the usual progression, the victim visits a psychic storefront for an inexpensive palm reading. Talented fortune-tellers assign homework to their clients, and persuade them to return repeatedly for convoluted rituals that escalate in price. Often, the psychic promises that the funds will be returned when the client’s problems are solved. Countering the failure of promised results, psychics convince clients to return by threatening certain catastrophe, calamity, and misfortune.
It is these advanced fortune-making skills I’d like to read about in the psychic schools’ syllabus: the inveigling, up-selling, cold-reading, deceit, and trickery. Which classes teach those vital skills? What about marketing, costuming, decor, and special effects?
The Psychic School in northern California offers many classes, all by telephone. One is Create Magic and Miracles. Is that the one in which you learn how to make teacups tip over and tables float? Most classes are $200, or you can take the two-year Teachers Program for $4,800. The Psychic School’s site carefully describes each course as self-healing, self-improvement, self-knowledge, and self-awareness. You study to be a psychic in order to read only your own chakra, energy, and dead people, right?
See your money-making abilities skyrocket
However, the Psychic School does point out that “with the development of your clairvoyant abilities, the decisions through which you create your life come with ease, your creativity and money-making abilities skyrocket….” I take that to mean that as a graduated “psychic” (the Teachers Program ends with a “Psychic School Certificate of Graduationg” [sic], there’s no end to the creativity you can use and fees you can charge to scam your clients. Becoming a clairvoyant, you will “create a life filled with insight, creativity, and miracles.” Sounds great!
Let’s have a look at the Berkeley Psychic Institute’s Clairvoyant Training Program, which the institute also refers to as “psychic kindergarten.” It must be child’s play! But no. It’s a two-year, four-phase program of intensive learning and “hands on training from high caliber gifted psychics,” and concludes with “Uncovering your deepest challenges, moving through the fire and slaying the dragons.”
Berkeley Psychic Institute operates the DejaVu Psychic Hotline, where graduates can get instant employment doing telephone and email readings. Email readings? Yes, for $25, one can order an “Email Trance Medium Channeled Healing.”
“We do not consider ourselves as fortune tellers. We are fortune creators,” says the DejaVu Psychic Hotline website. Whose fortunes are being created?
Arthur Findlay College, pictured above and about an hour north of London, calls itself “The Worlds Foremost College for the Advancement of Spiritualism and Psychic Sciences.” Not only can one study mediumship, but also trance mediumship, in which “you will be connected to spirit working with spirit and supported by spirit.” Sounds complicated. And that is the clearest line in the entire course description. Is that an example of the obfuscation taught in the institute? Vital skill for a clairvoyant.
Perhaps the most important course for a psychic medium is Mediumship – Polish Your Performance. Since mediumship is learned—not an innate gift—one must study and practice to become convincing when channeling a spirit from the Other Side. This is “essential for customers not only to return but recommend you to others,” the Arthur Findlay College site says. I’m guessing there’s some overlap with trance mediumship. Arthur Findlay College is international and holds week-long sessions in a multitude of languages including Japanese, Swedish, Italian, Norwegian, German, French, and Finnish. It even markets a course especially for senior citizens.
What do Psychic Schools cost?
What does it cost to become a clairvoyant? A basic week-long course at Arthur Findlay College, say Mediumship & Spiritual Development, costs £570 (about $845) with room and board, double occupancy. Add £9 per person if you want a room with your own bathroom. With more than 80 courses available, a wannabe-psychic can spend a pretty penny.
But everyone knows that a solid education leads to a solid career. Just a few years ago, Psychic Michelle Morgan, of Tarzana, California, raked in almost a million from a single client, a young man whom she determined was suffering from a love curse. Psychic Michelle was patient; she kept her 25-year-old mark dependent on her rituals for two years, urging him to borrow more and more money to fund his psychic sessions. The skills she honed allowed her to entrap and ensnare her victims and exploit them for much more than they were worth. Like all those in her field, silver-tongued Psychic Michelle’s talent was unctuous smooth-talk, glib persuasion, and creative conning. Presumably, the 25-year-old million-dollar-client wasn’t Psychic Michelle’s only client.
So what does a clairvoyant college curriculum really teach? How does an institute prepare a student medium for a career in clairvoyance? Does it really teach curse-lifting, money-purifying, and soul-swapping? Are the students taught how to scam and con their clients? Or are the students themselves scammed by the schools?
Closing up our Stockholm house, I’ve been selling things on the local version of Craig’sList. Many items sell in the first day, even in the first hour after an ad goes live. Most buyers don’t try to bargain; they simply pay the asking price. Sure, that’s partly the Swedish character. Pricing items low has a lot to do with it, too.
After success with many items, I decide to list our car, a 15-year-old Saab in almost-new condition with only 83,000 miles and not a thing wrong with it.
The phone rings a few minutes after the ad is posted. The caller wants the car! He makes a half-hearted attempt to lower the price and Bob, who has taken the call, agrees to the little discount. The caller says he’s in Uppsala, a nearby university town, and it will take him a little more than an hour to drive down with a friend. Okay. The caller asks for explicit driving directions, and Bob gives it. The caller tells us to take the ad offline, since he’s coming to get the car. Bob says sure and finally hangs up.
Car Scam!
Bob relates all this to me and I become a little testy. What do you mean you agreed to a discount? Of course I’m not going to take the ad down! Not until I’ve actually sold the car. And who calls to say they’ll buy the car sight-unseen, instead of saying they’ll come take a look at it?
Several minutes later, I get an email from “Joel,” who writes that it sounds like a good deal, when can he come see the car? I tell Joel that we have buyers on the way, but come tomorrow morning unless I write that it’s been sold.
The scammer kept his car idling the entire 40 minutes he tried to rip us off.
Uppsala guy calls again. He’s driving, and in a chatty mood. He asks Bob endless personal questions. Overhearing Bob’s replies, alarm bells begin to toll in my head. The guy asks for driving directions again. Bob gives him turn-by-turn instructions. It sounds as if they’re close, since Bob is naming nearby streets and landmarks. They couldn’t be here already, all the way from Uppsala.
Anyway, what kind of people don’t have GPS nowadays, I’m wondering. Why are they asking for the same simple directions over and over? It occurs to me that they’re simply tying up the phone line, trying to prevent competing buyers from getting through.
The Uppsala guy and his friend arrive. They couldn’t have driven all the way from Uppsala so quickly. Bob goes outside to show them the car. I observe from the upstairs window like a suspicious witch.
The car scammer showed a “database” on his phone that proved how bad our car actually was.
It’s dark and below freezing outside. An icy wind numbs my face at the open window. They’re speaking Swedish below. Long conversations. Wild gesticulating. Brief looks inside the car and under the hood. The guy from Uppsala starts the engine and complains about the look of the exhaust, but he never asks to drive the car. Meanwhile, the friend’s SUV is idling.
Bob tramps upstairs. “The car has a ton of problems! It’s a year older than you claim in your ad. The odometer has been rolled back. It’s had ten owners before us. And there’s water in the oil. He made a low offer, but I think we should take it.”
I explode. “Why do you believe him? He’s a scammer!”
“He showed me the car’s history on a website.”
“Right—on his smartphone! His phone with internet and GPS and maps. Why do you think he kept you on the phone for 20 minutes asking excruciating details about how to get here? He just wanted to keep the phone busy so you couldn’t take any other calls!”
“Let’s take it. Saab’s bankrupt, the car might not sell at all.”
“It’s the first day! The first hour! And I already have another interested person. A guy who wants to see the car before he buys it.”
“I’ll try to get the price up a little then…”
“No. In fact, forget that discount you agreed to on the phone. For this guy, the price has just gone up. Full price in cash, or nothing.” I am a witch.
Don’t sell your car to this guy? He’s a scammer, a fraudster, and a con artist.
Bob goes back downstairs disappointed. The witch put in the ad, photographed the car, and therefore gets final word on the sale. The SUV has been idling all this time. Ready for a quick get-away? Foul fumes float into my face at the window. The scammer persists and keeps Bob in negotiation for another 15 minutes before he finally speeds off.
I email Joel and tell him the sale didn’t go through. He comes over immediately to look at the car, test drives it, asks to see its “besiktiningar,” an official document showing any work done prior to the car’s last registration. Joel tells me the car is a great deal at the asking price, and buys it. He pays cash.
Sold, in under two hours.
And the next day Joel returns to help us with an errand for which we need a car. We did not expect the car to sell so quickly. Nice guy, Joel.
I wonder how Uppsala guy would have paid, had we made a deal. Just guessing: he’d flash cash, but not enough—oh, sorry, that’s all I could get from the cash machine—then offer to pay more than the agreed price via PayPal—a phony account. Or… no. Why then, bother to negotiate at all? Because by then, we’d be convinced we’d never sell the car, it’s such a mess. Or is he a “short-changer” who knows how to fold cash to make it look like more than it is? This part, we’ll never know.
Most interesting: what happened to Bob’s scam-sensor? Why did he fall for this con artist’s story? Okay, the scammer must have been smooth. (They all are.) He was prepared with fake “evidence.” And we’d dealt with so many honest buyers before this one. And Swedes are pretty decent, on the whole. Bob’s guard was down. Yeah. Excuses, excuses. Reminder: we can all be taken. Stay alert!
Could be you after following Mike Richard’s advice.
Steal. Drink and snack from the hotel mini-bar, the unethical blogger advises in his unethical December 10, 2014 article. Go ahead and have a beer and a candy bar, then deny it at check-out. You’ll get it free!
Swindle. Use a depleted debit card to buy drinks on a plane. Free booze, yay, worth committing fraud for!
Cheat. Walk into a luxury hotel you’re not staying in and take advantage of guest services like free breakfast, the concierge, and luggage storage. They’ll never know!
After-effect of using a knowingly depleted debit card to buy drinks on a plane.
Unethical blogger’s advice will likely get you handcuffed.
Was the free beer worth it?
Lie. Tell the airline gate agent you have a peanut allergy and need to board first to wipe down your tray. Yeah, get that overhead bin space before the honest people get there!
Scam. If your “expensive” item breaks prematurely (an iPad is hinted), go buy a new one, repackage the broken one, and return it for a refund. Sweet dreams, if you can sleep after that one.
And on and on. Like, buy travel gear and return it for a refund when you’re done with it, the unethical blogger advises. Take an empty first-class seat on a plane and try to get away with it. Pay $20 to have your tires rotated when you need parking in a high-priced city.
Unethical blogger
Some people should not be journalists. Some journalists should be decommissioned. This guy, this Mike Richard, is one of them.
I’m not in the habit of slamming other bloggers. But it is my custom to report thefts, cons, scams, and the fraudsters who commit them. Mike Richard may or may not use the methods he espouses; he does call them “useful travel hacks.”
I try to live by a simple little motto: “What if everyone did this?” Would I want that world? If everyone shouted, littered, took a stone from someone’s yard, lied, cheated, stole…. Just…try to be decent.
I grew up with several versions of The Golden Rule. Simply put, treat others as you’d like to be treated. Reciprocity. It makes the world go ’round.
I have little issue with paid placement presented as personal opinion—that’s the way of the world. The way of blog-whores. But this unethical blogger will apparently say anything for money. He calls it paid advertising. No wonder his blog has only one advertiser, despite his plentiful pleas for ads. Well, he has three if you count Anthony Bourdain and a quick-print service.
Unethical and illegal. Steal. Cheat. Lie. Commit fraud. But sure, Mike Richard says, they are, “entirely useful… for shameless budget travelers”. I must not be the only one who finds this to be irresponsible journalism. And not the only one to find it repugnant.
I recently wrote about beggars on the streets of Stockholm. I observed that an abundance of beggars are now stationed in the streets, and that they are mostly from Romania. I argued that these beggars are organized, and possibly trafficked, that a large portion of collected money goes to “bosses,” and that Swedes are naive and therefore an easy market for the begging enterprise, which is in large part social engineering. The article became quite controversial, especially in Sweden.
Roma beggars in Stockholm take a break
A street in Constanta, Romania
A street in Constanta, Romania
A street in Constanta, Romania
Gypsy family in Romania
A gypsy woman, mother of five children, who collects plastic bottles for a living.
A little girl’s rough living.
A gypsy woman, mother of five children, who collects plastic bottles for a living.
Constanta, Romania skyline
Now, after making a trip to Romania, I have some follow-up information. (But you have to read through my rant before you get it.)
Romanian beggars in Sweden
Swedes are reluctant to believe that their cities and towns have been besieged by professional beggars. Despite the thousands of Romanian beggars in evidence, Swedes stubbornly insist that these are simply individual unfortunate humans who can survive by no other means. For some reason, Swedes excuse them from working for a living. Despite the fact that the Romanian beggars (individually!) all use the exact same posture, the same dress mode, the same plastic bundles of personal effects, the same blanket-wrap and paper cup and laminated photo—even the exact same laminated photo of the very same children. Despite the fact that prime “locations” seem to be continuously occupied, with methodical rotations of personnel so that the position is never vacant, never vulnerable to being usurped by a competitor. Despite the fact that these locations follow a scheme favoring the doors of particular grocery and liquor stores and subway entrances, all over Stockholm and all over Sweden.
Really. Are these Romanian beggars—all the several thousands of them—each sole and separate individuals, each uneducated, each unable to work, each self-organized?
Is Sweden a country of ostriches with their heads buried in the sand? Not quite. Sweden holds a native population intensely dependent on social proof. Everyone is terrified of committing inappropriate behavior, voicing an unpopular belief, not conforming to the group mentality. Everyone’s afraid of appearing to lack compassion, sympathy, charity, and brotherly love. Everyone’s afraid of appearing racist.
For an excellent example of this attitude, take a look at an August 28, 2014 article in Metro, the free paper distributed on Swedish trains. “No, the beggars are not controlled by criminal gangs,” is a translation of the Swedish headline. Its main source of intelligence is a Swedish “homelessness coordinator.” I don’t know, but I would suspect that Romanians who occupy Sweden for the purpose of begging do not go to the state for housing. That’s why they have bosses! To organize them, find them places to sleep. Also note that they carry their possessions around with them in sacks, like old-fashioned hobos.
Other sources in the article tiptoe through their interviews, cautiously hedging with evasive statements like this police officer’s: “‘It is very difficult to say that begging is organized,’ says Stockholm Police Peter Enell.” The article also makes short shrift of the statements by “a police officer with roots in Romania.” To me, the Metro article is laughable. Have a look. Or don’t waste your time.
To find out more about Romanian beggars, Bob Arno and I went investigating in Romania.
We met with a highly experienced police officer and another official in the city of Constanta, neither of whom would like to be named. Both told us that Romanians who beg outside of Romania are definitely organized. (I did not ask about beggars inside Romania.)
I asked if poor villagers sought out begging gang-leaders for assistance, or if villagers were recruited by the gangsters. They are recruited, I was assured. They are desperately poor, and they are Roma. On their own, they could not afford foreign travel. They require the assistance of leaders (bosses, aka gangsters) who organize their transportation. Of course, these bosses must be repaid.
The official pointed out a number of Roma men drinking on the sidewalks. They are robbers, he said.
The police officer said that people are still maimed for the purpose of begging. I did not get clarification, but I take this to mean that it is children who are maimed. The officer described a horrendous practice, in which adults push a child into slow-moving traffic. When the child is hit and injured, the adults demand cash on the spot from the driver in order to not involve the police.
It’s hard to believe that this barbaric savagery really happens. Yet, the officer told us that this exact atrocity had occurred only two days before our meeting, right in the center of town, in front of Tomis Mall (near where we found our pickpockets the next day). I can’t get the nightmarish image out of my head.
I must presume that the adults were not the parents of the child victim. Who is the child, then? Stolen? Purchased? Rented? I also presume that the child, with its unpredictable injuries, is intended to become a compelling beggar who will attract sympathy and more cash with its twisted limbs and scarred skin.
This anachronism is difficult to grasp in modern, civilized society. It’s impossible to imagine the desperation and cold-bloodedness that leads to such an industry.
(It brings to mind the 1989 novel Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn, in which a circus family man concocts chemical cocktails for his pregnant wife, thereby creating his own deformed children for his own lucrative freak show. However, those children are loved. Great book!)
Roma in Romania
Bob and I spoke with a gypsy family that happened to walk past us in Constanta, Romania. Our translator begged us not to, insisting that it would bring trouble and they’d demand money. He said they wouldn’t speak much Romanian and he didn’t speak any Romany. Bob persisted, and the family sat down in a nearby park, amenable and unperturbed.
They were clearly penniless. The mother’s clothes were black with muck and she carried a grubby blanket. The children, eight and eleven years old, were bright and alert. They answered Bob’s questions with the same trepidation any shy children would, glancing at their mother, who smiled back and nodded. The children attended school. The mother had not.
I was enchanted by the little girl, whose scarred and dirty face was beaming one moment, serious the next. Her radiant smile baring two chipped front teeth hinted of a tough life. Her rubber sandals were cracked, broken, and dirty. Her feet were caked with grime, her toenails chipped and encrusted. She wants to be a doctor.
The mother has five children: 3, 8, 11, 15, and 20. They live in a house where they pay a small rent. The children’s father is very ill, she told us. He was hit in the head recently. But she doesn’t drink or smoke, she emphasized, as if to counter an unsaid accusation. Also, her brother has been arrested and is in jail for two years. She didn’t elaborate, but added that she’s not afraid of police. She’s sad that she doesn’t have her own house—that’s her dream. To support her family, she collects plastic bottles.
“You ask hard questions,” our translator said, “very personal.”
Now Bob beat around a bush. Without asking directly, he tried to find out if the family had been approached by human traffickers or gangsters offering them a better life. He spoke directly to the children.
Our translator was not familiar with our peculiar area of interest and had no idea what we were getting at—which is just the way we wanted it. No interfering, no answering on behalf of the family or spinning their replies. It was interesting to observe his change in attitude. He softened toward the children, he was charmed by them, and impressed by the mother’s candid and sincere statements.
When Bob invited the mother to ask him questions, she had none. She simply smiled and said “I’m glad that you asked us all these questions and pleased that you are interested in our life.”
The family did not ask us for money, though we gave them some at the end. The children handled the bills reverently, then handed them to their mother. The woman was surprised and grateful.
Criminal Romanian begging rings
I have not seen any children (Roma or otherwise) begging in Sweden. I’m sure it wouldn’t be tolerated. However, Romanian children beggars and pickpockets are plentiful in England, Italy, Spain, France, and probably additional European countries, but those I have listed I have personal experience with.
Here’s a 2-minute BBC clip on Romanian child-beggars, human trafficking, begging-ring bosses, and new riches in poor Romanian villages.
Just a few years ago, one never saw beggars in Stockholm. Today, one never sees Swedish beggars, but beggars from Romania seem to be on every corner, at the door of every shop, and at every subway station entrance. It’s an orchestrated invasion; just like the organized Gypsy begging that has been investigated and documented in the U.K. However, in Stockholm, I haven’t (yet?) seen child beggars. Not even babes in arms. I suspect the kingpins are smart enough to realize that Sweden wouldn’t stand for that.
The Swedish government periodically debates the possibility of banning begging, but then, what would happen to the few homeless and drug-addicted Swedes who beg, and the few alcoholics out on the street? Where would they get cash?
Well then, let’s ban begging by foreigners! Good idea, but unlikely to happen any time soon, I think. Everything in Sweden happens by committee, and happens slooooowly.
Tools of the trade: “family” photos and a paper cup.
A Swedish citizen donates to a Romanian beggar in Stockholm
This couple just gave 100 crowns, about US$15, to a beggar-woman.
A beggar in the Stockholm subway.
When border control within the European Union went soft, it didn’t take syndicate leaders long to take advantage of the new freedom of movement. Transnational criminal activities increased, particularly human trafficking.
For now, EU citizens are allowed to come to Sweden and stay without permission for up to three months. The Gypsy bosses know the rules. They transport the poor Romanian villagers, house them, feed them, and ferry them to their assigned begging spots. They come along and empty the cash-cups periodically.
Like the employees of a global theme park, all the Romanian beggars in Stockholm seem to be clones, all carbon copies of a model with a signature style. They all sit, they’re all wrapped in a blanket, they all hold a paper cup, and they all show photos of children. They all have a number of plastic bags near them, stuffed with things. They all block the flow of traffic.
Sweden is perfect…
Sweden is an excellent venue for this racket. Its citizens are wealthy, compassionate, and to some extent naive. The government is hamstrung and afraid to act. Tourists are rarely the budget type. I see people contributing to the cups (to the bosses’ riches); I’ve never seen meanness or complaint toward the beggars, not even hey-you’re-blocking-the-way.
The issue, the poor-Romanian-beggar, abused-victim-or-system-abuser conundrum, fraught with racial implications, is a bush to be beat around. In Sweden, there’s a ubiquitous fear of “what others think.” Everyone’s afraid to appear incorrect.
We spoke to a couple just after we saw them hand over a hundred crowns (about US$15) with a kind word and pat on the beggar’s arm. They give often, they said, whenever they can. They know these people are poor and need the money to feed their children. The couple buys into the scam hook, line, and sinker. Oh, I believe the beggars are poor and, since they don’t work, need help to support their families. But even the Romanian ambassador to Sweden thinks begging should be outlawed (and acknowledges that the beggars are her countrymen).
The beggars’ bosses* keep track of time. When three months are up, the gang is packed up and moved on for another stint elsewhere. Meanwhile, those at the top of the organized hierarachy build palatial houses back in their dumpy Romanian villages, and poor Romanian parents who “rented out” their children to begging and pickpocketing rings likewise see relative wealth.
Magician Charlie Caper performed well in spite of the beggar who hobbled onto the stage and disrupted his show.
After the beggar-woman gains attention on stage, she heads out into the audience with her cup.
After taking undue applause with the magician, the beggar proffers her cup and photo.
The beggar smiled, pointed, gestured, and took the magician’s applause.
The beggars are mostly women and usually have a number of stuffed plastic bags beside them.
A beggar in Stockholm
A beggar in Stockholm
Romania’s Command Central in Stockholm? There’s always a cluster on the stairs at Sergel’s Plattan.
Bob and I strolled through Kungsträdgården, a central park area in Stockholm, while a street performers’ festival was in full swing. Magician Charlie Caper, surrounded by a good crowd, was mid-routine when one of these Gypsy beggars actually waddled on stage and joined him.
Atypical for her type and oddly gregarious, she seemed to thrive on the magician’s reflected attention. The brazen beggar gestured, she pointed, she ta-da’ed. And when the crowd applauded for the magician, she soaked it up all-smiles and headed into the audience with her cup and photo, as if she were collecting for her talented son. The audacity!
Is it good to give?
Let’s say for a moment that the gypsy beggars in Stockholm get to keep all the cash they collect. I know—but just for arguments’ sake. Then subtract what they must pay for transport from Romania and in three months, to some unknown point (by crowded bus?). And subtract what they pay for food, lodging, and local transportation (which is not cheap in Sweden). They must be gathering a pretty penny, to make their long days on the cold pavement (Sweden, winter…) worthwhile. Citizens and tourists fill the beggars’ cups and the Gypsies (often seen talking on their mobile phones) call their friends and relatives back home and urge them to hop on the next bus to Stockholm, the deal’s great.
Or let’s say it’s not like that at all. The beggars are basically slave labor, trafficked humans, forced to sit on the pavement all day, forced to follow company protocol behaving just so. Strict overseers collect the beggars’ takings periodically and they are given a small wage. Most of the money donated by good samaritans goes into the pockets of the ringleader who—it’s well-established by now—builds palatial mansions (relatively speaking) in Romanian villages otherwise full of wood shacks.* The whole enterprise is a social engineering stunt—one huge scam exploiting public empathy and generous social services.
Either way, depositing funds into the cup-accounts of bundled beggars on the street is not a smart way to help. It rewards the begging enterprise, feeds the criminal organization, and ensures the continuation of the practice. Donors are kindhearted patsies.
Of course Stockholm isn’t the only city under siege. In fact, all of Sweden, even small towns in the frigid north, has been invaded by organized Romanian beggars. Denmark made headlines when Trine Bramsen, justice police spokeswoman for its governing Social Democrat party, said “We don’t want to make Denmark a hotel with a reputation across Europe for free food and board.” She wants them to “choose another country, for example Sweden, where they know they have better possibilities.” Looks like that’s working.
Some parts of the Austria, for example Tyrol and Salzburg, tried to ban begging altogether. But the Constitutional Court overturned outright bans, ruling that begging is a human right.
The European Union is desperate for a solution but the problem is huge—far bigger than organized begging, even though these rings fall within the realm of human trafficking. “The problem of human trafficking in the European Union” is good read, freshly presented by the European Parliamentary Research Service.
A tool to combat trafficking, is knowledge of its causes and vulnerabilities of victims. This Romanian study of trafficking in persons for forced begging provides such a picture. It highlights the vulnerabilities of potential victims, the characteristics of traffickers and outlines recommendations on combating both these aspects. This study will assist in facilitating ongoing campaigns and cooperation to fight against this heinous crime, to fight for the protection, assistance to, and dignity of the victims and most importantly, to prevent trafficking.
Well-meant donations to beggars enrich the criminal syndicate leaders and further enslave the individuals forced into begging. Giving to beggars is misplaced kindness. The gift does not remain in the hand that receives it.
*Edited 7/29/14 to add support and sources:
“The leaders of a child-trafficking operation that put hundreds of beggars on the streets of Britain were targeted in a series of raids today in a remote Romanian town where opulent mansions have sprung up since the country joined the European Union. … at least 17 people were arrested after the raids on 33 homes in Tandarei [Romania] by a small army of organised crime investigators, assisted by 26 Metropolitan Police officers and two observers from Interpol. … Firearms, jewellery, luxury cars and large sums of money were found at the homes of suspects, according to local media, which said that 320 Romanian officers were involved in the operation. Tandarei, with its population of 12,000 people, 150km east of Bucharest, has undergone a seemingly miraculous economic boom in the past few years.” Police in Romania arrest leaders of child-trafficking operation in UK, The Times, April 8, 2010
If you don’t have a subscription to The Times and do not want to pay £1, the text is also here. Underline above is mine.
Edit: Finally, 10/4/14, Sweden admits out loud that the beggars are organized and pay big bucks to bosses.Beggars are Forced to Pay, in Dagens Nyheter, Swedens biggest daily paper. Here’s a Google-translation of the page.
Edit: It is mid-December, mostly dark and freezing out, and I see just as many beggars as in the summer. Perhaps more are in the subways and inside the entries of grocery stores than out in the streets, but they’re in full force. Well-bundled, at least.
Edit: Over six days walking all over London in August 2015, I saw exactly two beggars. Police tell me they are removed from the streets immediately and given food and shelter.
They’s ony three kinda men I won’t play with: That’s a po’ man, a blind man, an a police-man!
Rod the Hop, my Las Vegas three-card-monte informer, died last month, aged 56. He was a card tosser whose demonstrations proved that drills teach skills for life. He set up in areas with less police presence, favoring the sidewalks outside large factories, especially on payday, “where there’s eight hundred people going to lunch and they have to walk by you,” he said.
“A real good spot is outside military bases, where you’ve got a lot of young, naïve kids with nothing much to do and a little bit of money to spend.
“The moves are easy. You can learn it in a day and be good in a week. It’s the presentation that’s important. You have to have unflinching audacity and unmitigated gall. I don’t get intimidated.”
I love the way Rod spoke.
He was renown as a “card mechanic,” which is a card manipulator, as entertainment and teaching, and/or cheating in card games. As a card mechanic, Rod the Hop worked both ends. He was loved by the worldwide magic community; and had four felony convictions for casino cheating.
He was also renown as a “slot mechanic,” which could mean slot machine repairman but, in Rod’s case, meant he was a convicted slot machine cheat. Just last year he had the honor of becoming person number 34 in Nevada’s Excluded Person List, aka “the Black Book.”
He told us he tore apart and studied slot machines in his apartment, so he had to use a friend’s place as his “official” address so his parole officers wouldn’t find them.
Travelers may encounter three-card monte games anywhere. Players are purposely given a glimpse of the target early in the scramble, a skillful slip is performed by the tosser, and players thereafter carefully track the wrong object with confidence.
I’ve called three-card monte a “game” but, like the three-shell game, they’re games of no chance: tricks and traps. You’ll see other players win and walk away, but they are, in fact, shills. You cannot win. If you win once, it’s at the tosser’s pleasure in hope you, or someone in his audience, will bet big.
Advice from a three-card monte expert
In the words of Rod the Hop
The object of three-card monte is to make money. Each person in the crew gets an equal end. Some days it’s good and—it’s a street game so obviously you can only make as much money as what a person has in their pocket. But if you make two or three hundred dollars apiece a day, then you’ve done what you set out to do. Most of it has to do with grift sense, and your con and your presentation. That’s more than the skill factor, I would say.
It’s just a hustle. I mean, you just do the best you can and you prey on tourists or suckers that don’t know they’re breathing air.
Rod the Hop
Rod the Hop ropes suckers into three-card monte
What I look for in a sucker is, they’ve got money, number one. And that they’re a sucker. I don’t have a conscious thought pattern that goes through my mind when I see a sucker. I know a sucker when I see one. I just do. I’ve been doing it so long, I know a candy bar when I see one. That’s all there is to it.
But by the same token, I know someone that’s not a sucker, or might be a cop, or somebody that knows the game. I can just feel it. I just know a sucker when I see one and my crew does too. You know that when you pick a crew. I don’t go out and say, yeah, he looks like a pretty good thief and has a lot of grift sense, I’ll get him. The deciding factor whether you have a good crew or a bad crew is how much grift sense all your partners have. But most of the time you’re not going to hook up with someone that doesn’t have grift sense.
You’ll find the game in the back of buses, train stations, things like that. Very seldom do you see it in the streets, cause if it’s windy it’ll blow the cards open.
I used to go outside a factory. Believe it or not, all you have to do is set up a box and start throwing cards and people will just stop by to see what you’re doing. You don’t have to say anything. Then you start betting with the shills. And pretty soon people get to realize that it’s a betting game. I’ll keep throwing it, and my shills will be betting, and they’ll be winning and the sucker sees them winning, and so they want to bet. And I might even let the sucker win some if I see other suckers that might have more money.
So, the red card’s on the bottom of the two cards and the black card’s on top. When I throw the cards down, I’ll throw the top card instead of the bottom card, which is the red card. But first, just to get into the rhythm of it, I’ll do it for real. I’ll throw the red card on the bottom, and let them watch where it is, very slowly, and they’re watching and wondering where the red card is. And there’s no question where the red card is.
And they’ll want to bet, so I’ll say, well here, let me do it again. And then I’ll pick them up and they’ll say, oh gosh, I was right. I knew where the red card was. And then I’ll do it again, and now they’ll want to bet. When I don’t want them to win is when I’ll throw the top cards. And then obviously they’ll lose.
You would think that a normal person would think, wait a minute, I knew where the red card was. I bet on it and I lost. Why? Well you’d think a guy would just quit. But no, not suckers. Suckers go, ‘wait, this time I’m really going to watch him.’ And then they’ll bet more money, and it just goes on and on until they don’t have any more money. So I try to entice as many suckers as I can to bet on it. Then, when everybody’s out of money, I take the cards, stick them in my pocket, and walk away. And then we’ll go somewhere else.
I’m where there’s people. Where there’s people there’s money, and where there’s money there’s me. And that’s where you do con games. You can’t do it if there’s no customers. Where there’s people, there’s suckers, and where there’s suckers, there’s people like me.
The reason people try to beat this game is because of the skill of the operator. It’s my presentation. I say, ‘look, I want to show you something.’ First off, I say ‘this isn’t three-card monte.’ Because then you’re thinking, this is not three-card monte. I tell them that you win on the red and you lose on the black. Now watch. Here’s a red card. I’m just going to set it right there. Then here’s a black card and I want to set it right there, and just switch them. Now where’s the red card? Will you bet on something like that? Well sure you would, if you were a betting man. But if you’re not a betting man, you’re not going to do it.
And this is a cliché that everyone uses, that you can’t beat an honest man. Well, you can’t beat someone that’s not trying to win your money. You can remember that. As a hustler, and doing the three-card monte, I cannot get my money from someone that’s not trying to get my money first.
Rod the Hop throws three-card monte
This is a real old game, this three-card monte. I know it’s at least a hundred years old. It’s in a book a hundred years old, published in 1902. But each generation that’s never seen it before thinks they can beat it. There will always be suckers.
Look, three-card monte is a great little hustle in the street. And frankly, I don’t do it any more because there’s not enough money in it for me. It’s only as good as how much money a person has in their pocket at that time—right now. How many people walk around nowadays with eight hundred dollars in their pocket, or a thousand? Or even three hundred? You know what they got? They got about six dollars and fourteen credit cards. That’s what people have nowadays. They don’t carry around cash. The only people that carry cash nowadays are criminals.
The one good thing about three-card monte and the three-shell game and the short cons like that, is it’s a good training ground for con men, for grifters. It’s a prep school, if you will. Most people grow out of it.
If you’re a tourist and you see a three-card monte, don’t stop and look at it and think, well I know that he throws the top one sometimes and maybe sometimes he throws the bottom one, or whatever. I’m telling you right now. Do not play it. Cause it’s a guarantee, you cannot win. It’s simple as that. And that’s my advice. I can promise you, you cannot beat it. Just go on down the road when you see it.
Like Rod the Hop, Bob Arno, the famous pickpocket, is also known in and has deep knowledge of the worlds of magic and crime. Watching Rod work, Bob was impressed with his coolness, his social-engineering, his roping-in of “suckers.”
I was impressed with his patter. Here are a few of his lines, usually delivered in a rapid-fire drawl while his hands were flying and his mind was sizing up potential marks:
“This here ain’t no three card monte, this here’s the Mexican pitti-pat, where you win on the red and you lose on the black…
“Watch me now, I’m gonna race ’em and chase ’em, so watch where I place ’em…”
“If you gotta lotta nerve and you gotta lotta plenty, five’ll getcha ten and ten’ll getcha twenty…”
“I’ve played this game with Yankees and Southerners, Senators and Governors. Money on the card or no bet, where’s the red? If I can bluff you I can beat you. Come on bet five, bet ten! Ho down now, get your chicken dinner in the center, where’s the red?…”
[Thanks to Paul Chosse, who thought to put these lines in writing back in 2005.]
