Yeah, this story’s everywhere, about the Phoenix couple who made a living stealing luggage off the airport carousel. Police found almost a thousand suitcases in their house.
Almost 1,000 bags found at home of thieves. Almost all black.Luggage stolen from Phoenix airport. Almost all black.Stolen luggage is gathered and moved from home of thieves. Almost all black.
Not a single report has pointed out that the stolen luggage is almost all black. I described this strategy in a post more than a year ago, and in my book way before that. This is an M.O. This is something to notice and learn from.
Thieves prefer to steal black luggage because so much of it looks alike. If the thief is caught red-handed by the bag’s owner, he only has to say sorry, it looks just like mine. And he’s out of there. Scot-free.
Look at the photos on the right. This is just a fraction of the bag booty as it was gathered on the thieves’ property. The bags we see are almost all black.
The bag-boosters are not rocket surgeons. Not a lot of brain power goes into concocting a brilliant strategy. These two, Keith and Stacy King, traipsed into the baggage area straight from the parking lot. They might not have been caught had they walked up a level, then come down the escalators as if from the gates.
They’re not the first to steal baggage off the conveyor belts. Earlier this year, a man was arrested at Dallas Fort Worth airport. He admitted taking over 400 bags, and police linked him to at least 600. He also “worked” at airports in Houston and Tulsa, allegedly stealing a number of suitcases every day. And long before that, a Las Vegas man regularly supplied a second-hand clothing store with the stuff from bags stolen off McCarran’s baggage belt. [Linked to above.]
Which is yours?
After 9/11, airports moved security staff from arrivals to departures. With no bag tag checkers, anyone can saunter out with anything. We passengers have minimal control. We can get to the carousel promptly, but what happens when bags get lost or delayed, or the bags make it but we are late? You’ve seen the jumbles of suitcases massed outside baggage service offices in arrivals halls. Do they look protected? At the most, they’re penned in by a crowd-control ribbon. No one will take responsibility. Not the airlines. Not the airports. Not TSA. Not police.
So here’s the obvious lesson. Buy pink luggage. Or green, or silver. If you have black, decorate it.
A member of the Raskol gangs of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Photo by: Stephen Dupont (Contact Press Images)
After further research, I feel compelled to write a little more about Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. For all the pretty pictures in my last post, I think I missed the real story.
Bob and I behaved quite like the typical tourists we seek to educate. We did not read up in advance about the dangers of the city. We strolled naively throughout the town and along deserted roads outside of town. We did leave our watches and jewelry behind, and we did dress down to the extent we were able. (We didn’t have torn jeans with us, the garb recommended in an old Time magazine article. And we were not out after dark. But I went out with a good camera and an iPod in a purse. Bob carried a new, $4,000 video camera. Were we nuts?
Crime in Port Moresby
Absolutely. And stupid. We did not know about the vicious criminals called the Raskols. Usually referred to as gangs, the Raskols are more accurately described as loose associations of thieves, according to tavurur, a Port Moresby native blogger. Practically anything you read about Port Moresby credits them for the city’s astronomical crime rate, then mitigates the blame by citing an unemployment rate of anywhere from 60-90%.
Numerous lengthy articles online detail the safety and security precautions necessary to lessen the risk of misfortune. Drive carefully, because the locals react emotionally and violently to accidents. But don’t drive too slowly or you’ll increase the likelihood of being carjacked. Carry cash to hand over when you’re accosted. Move about with a certified escort. Women, don’t wear shorts or pants if you don’t want to be raped or gang-raped. The lists go on and on, one of which even advises (jokingly, I presume) chewing betel nut to look like a local.
Eric Lafforgue's Papua New Guinea photos are phenomenal. Click this image to go to all 466 of them.
In retrospect, Bob and I presented a tasty target. Alone, smiley, swinging our cameras… I’m thinking of the minutes we spent at a secluded dead-end high above the shore, looking down at a christening ceremony. We watched the formally dressed witnesses on the sand and the participants wading chest-deep in the sea. We looked across to a far village of houses on stilts over the water. It never occurred to us that we should be watching our backs.
It’s easy to be seduced by the sheer exoticism of Papua New Guinea, by the natives in traditional costumes, the spectacular flora and fauna of the highlands and ocean reefs. Travel enthusiasts I’ve spoken with have been quick to say oh, I want to go there. Local dangers are defined in guides and online, easy to be found, but still—Bob and I managed to get there oblivious to the status quo. Not all tour operators or trip providers are forthcoming when it comes to negative publicity. The burden, in the end, falls on the traveler. Know before you go, as they say. Do your homework.
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.
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.
Railway mafia groups fight over territory along the thousands of kilometers of track across Central & Eastern Europe. The most lucrative connections are those between major cities which are most frequented by foreign tourists who are filthy rich, naive, gullible, and can afford to shed some of their wealth, in the eyes of the criminals who specialize in robbing sleeping victims.
…˜The mafia groups fight amongst themselves for territory and they use sleeping gas to subdue their victims,’ said the sheriff of a Polish railway station on the Polish-Czech border with over 30 years experience in his job who requested that his name be withheld. …˜They are very skilled and use the ventilation system to gas their victims or quietly inject the fast-acting gas into their cabins through a slightly opened door.’
Foreign tourists are followed and carefully watched. There is no easier place to rob them than in a train which they essentially control on some tracks way out in nowhere. They attack you when you are asleep, that’s their style and that’s their specialty.
—Central & East European CrimiScope
www.ceeds.com/cee-crimiscope [defunct]
THAT READ, we traveled exceptionally lightly for our week-long research trip to Prague. One change of clothes, computers and camera equipment, money, passports, and plastic watches each.
We boarded the Venice-to-Prague overnight train at 8 p.m. on a Saturday. After being forced to surrender our tickets to an unidentified man (who we eventually learned was our “attendant”), we were shown to a gritty compartment. Dust clumps the size of rats swirled around the floor. Sad brown floral curtains of a coarse material hung above mismatched cushions and general grime. The bunks had been opened and made up for sleeping, with bed linen that seemed fresh and clean enough. But it was stifling hot in the un-air-conditioned train, and the stale air was of suffocating stillness.
There was no choice in the sweat-smelly and sweltering compartment but to leave the window open for air, despite the deafening, rackety-clackety clamor which made sleep all but impossible. In the dark hubbub, aromas told a tactless tale. The smell of sweet wood smoke rushed in, then fresh-cut hay, and later cow manure. At every stop the train’s brakes sliced the rhythmic clatter with ear-piercing shrieks. I clamped my palms to my overly-sensitive ears in agony.
Then, stationary in a depot or switching yard, sometimes for half an hour or more, I worried about that open window. Could someone reach in and grab a bag? Voices shouted, neighboring trains clanged and clattered: but even in the relative quiet, I was afraid to drop off to sleep. And without the circulation of air, our somber cell quickly grew hot and sour-smelling.
We had read so much about East European train robbers I was, frankly, petrified.
Bolt your door from the inside, I read.
One common, square-hole key opens all compartment doors, I read somewhere else.
Bring wire with which to secure your door, and tie down your belongings.
Sleep on top of your bags.
Don’t sleep!
What scared me most were the tales of the gassers, who knock you out in the dead of night by fumigating your compartment from under the door. Then they break in and help themselves to your belongings. My doctor friend Ann had said there was no gas she knew of that wouldn’t wake you up with its smell, or make you gag or throw up, or kill you. Was that supposed to be comforting?
I was primed for panic when aroused from a light and fitful nap by the quiet rattling of our door. I heard a key jiggle in the lock and the bolt was thrown. The door was yanked open an inch and stopped by the safety chain, which held. A flashlight shined at me through the crack and several male voices mumbled quietly.
Not very sneaky, I thought. But maybe they have knives! They couldn’t have expected as light a sleeper as I. Or—I sniffed the air—maybe they’ve gassed us, not expecting an open window to dilute the chemical.
“Passports,” Bob murmured from the bunk below me—not the night-train-novice I was. We were at the Austrian border.
Thus experienced, I was prepared for the repeat performance several hours later at the Czech border. We were not well-rested when we arrived at Prague at 9:00 in the morning.
Psychology is an integral part of a good cannon’s skill-set. He must be able to read the mark. More than one good pickpocket has told us that the rush is better than a drug high (which many have the experience to compare), when he sinks his hand into a mark’s pocket and touches a wallet, even if there’s no actual extraction. Just being there—inside a complete stranger’s pocket—is a rush. Pickpockets often come up with nothing, for many reasons. The poke was lying sideways in the pocket. It was too thick. In a woman’s handbag, the zipper opening was not large enough to let the wallet slide out, The mark made a move sideways, or suddenly changed face expression (to anger or strain). Grift sense informs the pickpocket’s next move in the game.
Early this month, Germany’s RTL Television Network sent for Bambi and me for its program, Extra. Over the past six or seven years I’ve had several segments on RTL’s Extra, all with high ratings; which may explain why the network flew two people all the way from Las Vegas to do only a ten-minute spot in a one-hour news-program.
RTL Extra producer Burkhard Kress with pickpocket Bob Arno
This time the assignment was different and demanding. The producer, Burkhard Kress, wanted me to steal from the public at Munich’s enormous Oktoberfest, where more than eight million people congregate over a two week period. The goal was to illustrate why pickpockets love crowds, and that Oktoberfest is a strong magnet to international cannons.
During the festival, hundreds of international pickpockets descend on Munich and practice their trade, not just on the fairgrounds, but also on public transportation, in hotel lobbies, and everywhere tipsy revelers rally—pickpocket heaven for sneak thieves. Cannons who usually operate in St. Petersburg, Bucharest, Rome, Naples, Athens, Paris, Marseilles, Barcelona, Lima, and Santiago, to mention just a few cities with a high level of whiz mob activity, come to Munich for the festival with hope of making a big kill.
Bob Arno dips into a woman's purse.
My challenge was especially tough because I couldn’t operate in the same environments or locales as my criminal colleagues, and had to work with serious limitations and restrictions. First of all, there was a time issue. We had only two days for the project. That meant starting work immediately upon arrival in Munich (from Las Vegas), without being able to first scout the venues, the crowds, the hidden cameras, where the undercover cops were patrolling, and where the best spots were to extract the pokes without being caught by law enforcement.
And RTL wanted “money-shots”—all television programs seek these emotional moments. They’re what drive viewers and ratings. They make for tense television and, most important, they stop viewers from switching to other stations. It’s why programs like America’s Got Talent are actually scripted, dripping with confrontational emotion when participants are ejected from the show.
Bob Arno in lederhosen.
The television money-shot in pickpocketing is when the reporter asks the victim about safety, and how he or she perceives the threat of theft and cons. The questions are usually: “So how do you feel about pickpockets? Could one steal from you?” The answer, hopefully, will be a confident: “No way, I’m too aware, my stuff couldn’t be stolen.”
Packed into this two-day visit, we had scheduled camera shoots (me stealing from the crowd), interviews of me, my analysis of security at Oktoberfest, and lessons in theft-avoidance. We also needed time to transfer some of my crime footage that illustrates new pickpocket techniques relevant to Germany and its visitors and viewers. A project like this really needs five days.
We arrived at the hotel and changed into the working uniform, this time traditional lederhosen. We rigged cameras and wireless microphones, experimental wrist-rigs, and the usual button-cams. We also had to take into account the local laws, like what can be filmed with audio (privacy laws).
A pickpocket (in striped shirt) uses a coat to hide his work as he steals a wallet from a man boarding a bus.
Next step was a briefing with the film crew to make sure everyone understood the logistics of filming thievery. Cannons will always shield the hand going into a pocket or purse with a jacket, a bag hanging sideways over the chest, or something. This allows the thief to hide his entry into the victim’s pocket, purse, or fanny-pack and the world around won’t see the extraction. My challenge was to keep my theft hidden from the vic and his friends while enabling the camera crew to film it.
We review the day's footage while waiting for duck dinners in a beer-hall. Nearby men climb on a table and strip.
I work fast, and my hands often fly lightly all over my mark. Usually, Bambi is the only one who can anticipate the item I’m after and where to point the camera. She was thrown a camera and became one of the crew.
Most of the drinking and much of the partying at Oktoberfest takes place in the many enormous beer-halls on the grounds, huge tented restaurants which are each sponsored by a different company. RTL did not receive permission for me steal inside the tents, where the crowds were dense, but the police knew that I was working with the film team at the festival. Therefore, we had to be aware of surveillance cameras and how they were monitored. Were they actively watched by humans, or was it a system that simply records everything so that officers can go back and view footage in case of an incident?
I also wanted to avoid the inebriated. Partiers were putting away six or seven one-liter mugs of prime Oktoberfest beer. Stealing from a drunk does not make for great television in my opinion—among criminal street pickpockets this is ranked at the lowest level. It’s entry level thievery and gets no respect from the whiz mobs. They call this kind of lowlife a lush worker.
Bob Arno tells RTL reporter why pickpockets hang around ATMs. Man in green shirt is Bob's next victim.
I hung around a row of ATMs for a while to watch for a taschendieb or two on the lookout for good marks. A team of four caught my eye. I was itching to go up and introduce myself—talk shop. It usually takes me thirty seconds to determine in a conversation if they’re thieves or not. But there was a fly in the soup here. Oktoberfest management had hired undercover cops from Romania to look for Romanian pickpockets and these guys could have been them. My suspects spoke only Italian and one of them just a tad of English. Yes, we had fun talking, but I didn’t get the confirmation I hoped for.
One by one, a few good potential marks walked away from the ATM after cash withdrawals. I telegraphed to the film crew that I was ready to go into action and got an approving nod: “go for it.” I lifted a few wallets and we got superb money-shot reactions when we returned them. It was “in the can,” and everyone was happy.
'No way you could take my wallet,' the victim said before Bob dangled his wallet before him.
What made this spot so successful? First and foremost, I saw where the marks placed their leathers (slang for wallets) and how thick they were. I could immediately determine the print of the poke. Translation: the four corners of the wallet and where the top of it was in relation to the top of the pocket—how deep down it was. That’s significant information because it allows the me to pick a technique of extraction: what fingers to use and where to grip. Yes, there are different methods to extract a wallet.
In an ideal scenario you want to nip the top edge with your nails and stay still while the mark moves away, he simply walks away from his property. The vic’s own motion hides the sensation of the poke sliding out. An alternative, for a good cannon, is to create a small diversion when the leather is lifted. A light brush against the legs is enough, or perhaps a more demonstrative push by a female whiz mob partner (or a stall). Each extraction need a slightly different approach and technique. Is he in motion or standing still?, how tight is the crowd around him?, and so on. Each factor counts and on top of it all, the equation changes constantly depending on my read of the mark’s face. Pickpockets call this skill—reading their marks—grift sense.
A crowd gathered as Bob lifted one item after another from this man.
In the two days, I made several misses—as any cannon does. Yes, I had my hand in the purse or bag, but there was nothing significant to pull out. In one case, when I was about take an entire handbag from a woman sitting on a bench, I saw that she suddenly got uncomfortable with my presence. Another time a man’s wallet was too thick for me to remove smoothly. These are typical complications which all pickpockets experience.
A good cannon will seldom lift more than three or four pokes in a day due to the sheer tension involved. Some will target their marks carefully, knowing from the appearance of the mark that he or she is likely to have a generous interpretation of “pocket money,” and a high credit card limit. One wallet, when targeted like this, should translate to quite a few thousand dollars by maxing out credit cards. Identity theft is the next natural progression for a good pick. If the whiz mob is technically inclined, they garnered the PIN while the vic made a transaction at the ATM. Europe’s chip & pin cards make this harder to accomplish, but that’s another story.
We had a lot of fun in Munich and I was again able to test my slippery skills in real life scenarios. As a stage pickpocket, I find the level of tension much higher when stealing without the protection of the theater setting. Street thieves call it having heart; and that doesn’t mean having compassion for your vics. It’s the exact opposite: the ability to put your hand in a total stranger’s pocket and be emotionally unaffected by it—feeling cool under pressure. Having heart also means one must have lived at least for some time in the criminal world, and knows the consequences of being arrested and spending time in the box. Though I’ve never been arrested, I think I can still consider myself as having heart. Except, for me, it does mean having compassion for the victim.
Women wear dirndls: long or mini; racy or demure; traditional, sequined, or alt.
Called in to pickpocket goodies from the massive Munich Oktoberfest crowd, Bob and I, just back from Japan to do a show for Monsanto in Las Vegas, raced to catch the last two days of the bawdy Bavarian festival. (Tokyo, Vegas, Munich in five days. Thank goodness for business class.)
Bleary-eyed, we were surprised to find the RTL TV Extra crew at the airport, cameras rolling. They whisked us straight to the heart of the party for 8 million, pausing only to slip Bob into lederhosen. Most people there wore traditional costumes: men in lederhosen, women in dirndls.
Big big beers and Bavarian barf. Drinking starts 10am. Beers are a full liter. By noon, people are doubled over and hugging trees.
It was noon, and the revelers had been drinking since 10 a.m. Some stumbled along, supported by friends. Others sat on the ground, heads in hands. No wonder: beer is sold by the liter mug and the whole idea is to drink as much as possible. The gutters ran with pee and puke.
Make room for another beer: lederhosen: made for easy peeing.
Right away Bob and I noticed “suspects”—probably pickpockets, in our opinion—scanning the crowds. Time was short though; Bob was supposed to steal from sober partiers. No time for thiefhunting. We stood on a grassy slope among the sick and sleeping, the singing, the happy, the tired. A man lay sprawled face down at our feet, right arm extended clutching his cellphone like a torch, like a fallen statue.
“Let me have this one,” our producer said with a wink. He bent and slipped the phone from the man’s grip. Too easy. Unable to rouse the plastered guy, we finally stuffed the phone into his back pocket and considered it safer than it had been.
Bob and I surveyed the mob, looking for likely marks. We had a to-do list of items to steal; and we hoped for victims who’d be good for television. We didn’t want the type who’d punch Bob in the face if they caught on— granted, though, they’d be great for television.
The failed wrist-cam hinders Bob's movements and misses the steals no matter how it's mounted.
In preparation for this challenge, our special cameraman, Frank Jeroschinsky, built a fancy “wrist-cam,” a lipstick camera he strapped to Bob’s arm with a cord that ran up Bob’s sleeve and into a backpack, where the recording device was stashed. The device was meant to capture the steal as Bob’s hand entered a purse or pocket. We didn’t have the heart to tell Frank how many cameramen before him had rigged similar set-ups. Bob just ran through the tests and trials and Frank saw for himself the disappointing results.
Bob stole from this girl's father.
Interesting to watch the regimented Germans let loose. As we mingled, futilely trying to blend in, we saw heaps of humanity crumpled on the ground, and those attending to them. A policeman tried to rouse a man splayed on a sidewalk. A first aid team huddled around an unconscious body. Friends supported friends as best they could.
Roving red cross wheel the sick away on stretcher wagons with yellow vinyl tent covers for privacy, window in vinyl for light.
Before Oktoberfest was over, Munich police had arrested more than 80 pickpockets. They had come from many surrounding countries, as expected. A more inviting gathering for thieves cannot be imagined. Celebrants with traveling cash flooded in from all across Europe and beyond. Flocks of Russians had flown in. Grassy parking lots were lined with hundreds of buses from Italy, Czech Republic, Spain, and more.
Pissoir optional. I was told even women skip the loo queues and use a tree.
Expecting a flood of pickpockets from Romania, authorities had also imported a special team of Romanian police.
Poor guy lost his head. Simultaneaous puking & peeing.
What struck me among all the drunk and sick and out-of-control partiers was the overall peacefulness. In two long days I didn’t see a single fight, didn’t hear shouts, insults, or curses.
Jan, the sweet cameraman always in the right place, uh—'lost' his wallet during the shoot.Beer-garden veg-free dinner: crispy roast duck, pretzel w/ cheese & onions, beer too heavy for me to lift one-handed. No, couldn\'t finish it. Sample prices: beer, €8. hotel wifi, €17. Half a duck with nothing else, €25.Fish-on-a-stick. Steckerlfisch grill over fires in long rows.Bob Arno in lederhosen, pickpocketed the Oktoberfest crowd for German RTL TV 'Extra.'
RTL Television’s Extra segment was broadcast the evening of October 5 to a 27% audience share. 17% has been their maximum, so it’s considered a huge success. Although it’s not officially online, we expect to get a copy of the piece shortly. Perhaps we’ll upload it. If so, I’ll link it here.
What would you do if you opened the safe behind the hotel manager’s desk and found your passports gone? One woman took creative action.
Mary from Michigan and her two adult children just quit their jobs and sold or stored everything. They’re taking a year to travel the world. Oh, what a plan!
After seeing our show, Mary told us about her recent visit to Laos. She and her son and daughter stored their stuff in Bangkok and took a boat down the Mekong to Laos. There, Mary put her few valuables into the hotel lobby safe: the family’s three passports bundled with $2,000 folded into an envelope, and some very large camera lenses.
When she went to retrieve her things, only the lenses remained. Mary quickly discovered that one key opened all twenty safe deposit boxes, and her interrogation of the hotel manager led her to suspect an employee (rather than a guest).
Mary channeled her fear and anger and made a plan. She and her kids fanned out among the alleys surrounding the hotel and shouted into the darkness with volume and authority. “I’ll pay $200 for the stolen passports!” Within half an hour, Mary was lightly tapped on her shoulder, the passports, still bundled, proffered.
And Mary paid up. She told me that people think she was crazy to pay, but she’d promised. The thieves hadn’t discovered the $2,000.
Shonya Michelle Young (Credit: U.S. Marshal Service)
Anna Bernanke hung her purse on the back of a chair at Starbucks. It was stolen and, soon after, she and Ben became victims of identity theft.
It’s extremely simple to steal a purse that isn’t attached to a person. It could be on the back of a chair, on an empty chair, or on the floor. Bob’s done it many times for television news shows. Yep, even in busy coffee shops and mall food courts, where you’d think a few people would notice. It has to do with how you drape a coat over the purse.
In her handbag, Anna carried what thieves call a spread: credit card, identification, checks, and her Social Security card (shame on her!). This is the jackpot for a pickpocket and identity theft ring.
Not all pickpockets know how to exploit checks and credit cards. But by now they know at least to sell them. In the old days, some thieves would actually bother to drop them in a mailbox.
Some pickpockets have their own ID theft specialists on staff or on call. When they snag a bag containing a spread, they want to cash a hefty check or two, and they want a fat cash advance on the credit card. They could just buy murch—stuff at a store—but then they’d get just a fraction of its value from a fence. A cash advance is the best, especially in cities with casinos. The thieves can request several advances simultaneously, at different casinos. Each will be approved because none has actually been granted yet. A thief can easily make about $60,000 in an hour with just one credit card.
I wrote of this in a forum a few years ago, and someone asked:
How can they get a cash advance without showing an ID matching their face to the name on the card? Whenever I’m in Vegas I get asked for ID when using credit cards even for a 5.00 purchase.
That’s where the pickpocket’s staff comes in. These thieves have a covey of accomplices on standby. “A blonde, a brunette, an Asian, an older woman with gray hair, and a heavy-set,” a practitioner of this business told me. They call them look-alikes. When the pickpocket gets a check or credit card with ID, he phones the accomplice who looks most like the victim (and that doesn’t have to be much!). The accomplice practices the victim’s signature a time or two, then goes to collect the cash advance (which the thief applied for at a machine.) At this point, the accomplice is referred to as a writer. She writes the check or signs for the cash advance. The harried teller or cashier takes a quick glance, sees a vague resemblance (maybe thinks: oh, honey, you’re having a bad day), and doles out the cash under pressure to serve the next person in line.
The suddenly-infamous George Lee Reid was [allegedly] the identity theft ring’s writer of one of Bernanke’s checks, at a bank in Maryland. The ring’s main writer, Shonya Michelle Young (pictured above), has just been captured. In her possession, she had fake ID, credit cards in the name of others, and “wigs worn while cashing fraudulent checks.”
More on look-alikes later.
Reminder to women: don’t hang your purse on the back of your chair. Don’t put it on the floor unless you put your foot through the strap. Reminder to men: valuables in your coat pockets are vulnerable if you hang the coat on the back of a chair.
A tiny skimmer removed from an ATM way back in 2006.
A reader wrote of an ATM experience which, soon after, led to $9,000 in fraudulent withdrawals. He was abroad, but this happens at ATMs everywhere; and so frequently that I think it’s worth posting as a reminder.
As I was using an atm at a money exchange kiosk, I received the cash I wanted but was unable to get my card back. The man in back of me told me I had to enter my pin number again in order to have the card returned. He even reached in front of me and hit some buttons and told me to enter my pin. I did so and after a slight wait, the card came back. The experience was unsettling because I had never heard of entering a pin number a second time to get your card back after a transaction and no one had ever brazenly reached in front of me to assist me at an atm. Since I received my cash and finally my card, I felt everything was fine. But that was the day the mysterious withdrawals began.
I called my bank as soon as I realized there was a problem. The woman I spoke with immediately closed the credit card account linked to my atm card. Within a couple weeks, the bank had deposited the total of the disputed withdrawals into my account.
There are two essential goodies the card fraudster needs: the info on your card and your PIN. Info on the card can be gained in many ways. A snapshot can be taken of it with a cellphone camera, an imprint can be made, or a skimmer can be attached to the ATM itself. Nowadays, skimmers can be tiny and imperceptible. The vital PIN can be easily obtained by the crafty thief’s strategy. The example above is a classic: the false samaritan. The fraudster offers help in order to gain what he needs. Sometimes these “samaritans” even make cellphone calls to helplines, handing the phone to the mark; but the person on the other end of the phone call is the fraudster’s colleague, who pretends to be a bank official.
To protect against these scams, first, don’t use an ATM that looks suspicious in any way. Unfortunately, they usually don’t look suspicious, even if they’ve been tampered with. Second, shield your PIN with your hand as you enter it. A wireless video camera may be mounted to capture the entry of your PIN. The illicit video camera, which is only the size of a sugar cube, might be in front of you, so your body won’t block it. Use your hand. Third, if your card gets stuck, get suspicious! Do NOT accept help from a stranger. Walk away from the card if you must, but do not give up your PIN. And lastly, always suspect the stranger who enters your personal sphere. That’s just not natural. He or she is after something—of yours!
It’s sad that we must suspect a friendly stranger, but a look at identity theft statistics is enough to convince anyone that it’s better to be safe than sorry. Ruthless, creative scammers specialize in benevolence, and they’re darn convincing. CONvincing, as in gaining your CONfidence. That’s why they’re called CON artists!
