What kind of monkey business is going on when the thief rejects cash and throws bills taken from the pocket onto the ground? Watch the video!
The backstory: a monkey in Bali, Indonesia, attacked Bob, unprovoked. It leapt onto Bob’s leg and dug though his pants pocket. Finding only a crumpled tissue, which it threw to the ground, it scampered up onto Bob’s shoulder and began rifling his shoulder bag.
That gave us an idea. We thought about what pickpockets around the world have told us: they look for “the print of the money.” That is, how the shape of a wallet or credit card shows itself through the pocket fabric, how a jacket hangs heavier on one side when there’s a fat wallet in one pocket, how a pocket bulges.
So we returned to the monkeys with five bananas. We put a banana in Bob’s pocket with cash on top. A monkey spotted “the print of the goodies” immediately and went for it, tossing the cash to the ground, digging out the banana, then sitting down a safe distance away for a gobbled feast.
We repeated this four more times in different areas, and each monkey’s behavior was the same. One almost tore Bob’s pants. Another bit through the fabric in its haste.
Bob’s pockets have hosted many thieves’ hands. As thiefhunters looking for pickpockets we use the exact same technique. We place the bait deep in a pocket—tempting, but not too obvious or easy to get. Then we stroll among thieves with antennas up, nerve-endings fine-tuned, and cameras rolling.
For various reasons, my luggage is hard to steal from. I take hundreds of flights every year, and so far, thank goodness, nothing has gone missing permanently. It’s no secret that there’s a problem with some airline and TSA employees stealing from luggage. It occurred to me that those thieves might sabotage the tags on luggage they’ve stolen from, in order to make the bag “disappear,” rather than to be traced to their handling of it.
TSA screeners convicted of theft from passengers or their luggage.
“New figures out today show 381 TSA officers have been fired for stealing from passengers and their luggage, and members of Congress think that just might be the tip of the iceberg,” said an ABC News report which aired September 27.
In a recent sting, ABC investigators walked away from an iPad at airport security and later tracked it to the home of Andy Ramirez, a TSA agent who denied stealing the iPad until the device was pinged and emitted an alarm sound from within his house. Although he was then forced to admit having possession of the stolen iPad, he blamed the theft on his wife. See his denial and ugly blame in the video:
Stealing “feels like being on drugs,” said Pythias Brown, a former TSA luggage screener at Newark airport, who was convicted for the theft of more than $800,000 worth of items over a four-year period. He described a “culture of indifference” at TSA, which “made stealing easy.”
On its blog, TSA calls 381 thieves “a few,” so perhaps they are not concerned.
See the rest of ABC’s report on TSA theft and a longer video. And keep your eyes on your belongings as you go through airport security.
A road warrior self-portrait taken in a hotel mirror
Atlanta Airport Police tell a business traveler that luggage theft from the carousel is currently an “epidemic” and “out of control.” The busines-traveler-victim plays detective and reports on the untenable shituation at Atlanta Airport baggage claim:
I was traveling on a two week business trip on a direct flight from San Antonio (SAT) to Atlanta (ATL). I travel domestically about 60% or 70% of the year, often through Atlanta as it is a major airport. This was, however, my first trip traveling to Atlanta as my destination city—on August 19, 2012.
Upon arrival, my commute to baggage claim was confusing. Like any airport, it required a lot of walking, but just when I assumed I had reached baggage claim, there was a subway that I was required to board. The subway was packed. It made at least 4 stops, each time pausing long enough for people to come and go. By the time I finally reached the baggage carousel, bags were just pouring out onto the carousel. None of the other passengers had reached it yet. We were the first! Judging by how the carousel wasn’t even completely filled up yet around the circular metal belt that rotated around, it looked like my business associates and I had arrived a few minutes late at the most. I distinctly recall all of my colleague’s bags just barely coming out for the first time as we stood there waiting. My bags never came out.
I didn’t realize it at the moment, but I was the victim of luggage theft with losses of about $3000. I waited in a long line where people wait in order to determine whether their bags were mixed up and stored in a back holding room for luggage, but the airline staff continued to reassure me that my bags were not back there. When she scanned my bag tag, it said that the last place it had reached was the baggage carousel.
In that moment, I was convinced that someone had come and stolen the luggage before the passengers arrived to the carousel! I looked around the baggage claim area, and the entire place looked suspicious and insecure! There were so many people standing far away looking to have absolutely no legitimate business there, just loitering off of the streets with their jeans sagged down to their knees.
I desperately tried to convince Delta, as well as the airport police, that my luggage was stolen! I knew it was, but nobody would listen. Everyone was as rude as could be, saying things like “you don’t know what you’re talking about. Some one probably mixed it up with theirs.” I knew that wasn’t the case. I had a unique Tumi duffel bag* that I’ve never seen anyone else traveling with. The police, Delta baggage staff, and the TSA were as apathetic as could be. I couldn’t even convince them to look into it, or consider the possibility that it was stolen!
What a nightmare! My bag had two weeks full of business attire, fitness attire, shoes (size 15 which are difficult to find), and prescription medication. I was at Walmart at 2:00AM trying to buy stuff just to wear the next day!
That’s when things got interesting! I began doing some research, convinced my boss to fly me home the following weekend where I had pictures of my 30″ Tumi duffel bag and receipts of all my stolen items. When I flew back to Atlanta to finish the second week of my trip, I persisted with the airport police, showing them pictures of what my bag looks like and documentation supporting the likelihood of my bag being stolen!
First what happened was that the airport police officer who was working at the front desk openly admitted to me that right now they have an “epidemic” (her words) of bag thefts in the baggage claim area of the Atlanta airport. She said, “Just between us, it’s out of control. We’re seeing guys like you come in here every day.”
I finally got through to a police investigator the next day who was on the phone with me as he discovered exactly what happened from looking at the surveillance video footage from the night in question. A black guy in a Kangol golf hat purposely worn low walked in. The detective said, “I can tell he knows what he’s doing”, in reference to how he wore his hat low and kept his head down the whole time. He said he knows that he is a thief because he was purposely standing far away from the carousel, not the way that people stand when they’re legitimately arriving to pick up their luggage. He said he showed up before ANY of the passengers reached the carousel, and then kept he eying my bag which was one of the first ones to come out. Keeping his distance, he waited until the bag rotated the whole way around the carousel until it was closest to his exit. Then he darted in, grabbing it, and taking off before ANYBODY even got there!
The detective openly admitted to me that they’re grabbing bags before people arrive. He said once they reach the building exit to the baggage claim, it’s a total loss and they don’t pursue it any further, no cameras, no investigation, nothing!
I believe that the Atlanta airport has a severe security hole. The thieves are aware of the timing issue where bags beat passengers to the carousels. They know just how easy it is to walk into the Atlanta airport with stolen luggage! They know that they have about 50 feet to walk towards the exit, then they’re scott-free because nobody will even look into it once they’re outside.
The airport is in a really horrible part of town. The baggage claim area is in a place where outsiders can walk in without authorization. After talking with the detective on the phone, I distinctly remember seeing other people walking around the parameter of the baggage claim building, looking around, but there was nothing I could do!
Nobody would help me. One week later, after I finally convinced the investigator to look into the problem, it was too late. I was accurate in my assumptions all along, but it was too late. That thief stole a lot of my clothes. The investigators have a video of the whole thing. They even printed out some pictures for me, but I could never pick them up because the investigator wasn’t present on my way to catch a flight home.
So that is my story. I just don’t know what to do right now because not enough people are aware of this bad security problem. I’ve already emailed the police chief of the airport precinct. I may eventually be reimbursed down the road, but the issue of them not pursuing bag thieves who shark luggage before passengers arrive is underexposed. I was hoping that perhaps by exposing it to more and more people, it will make them obligated to address the problem.
—Jacob
*About his luggage, Jacob added “It’s a wonderful bag–the 30” long black duffel bag by Tumi. The entire shell is of a soft, extra durable canvas material. What I love about it so much is that I could pack 14 pairs of pants and shirts with still room left for shopping, and the bag itself hardly weighs anything.
Tumi Alpha duffel
“Sadly, I’m torn on the decision to purchase my favorite Tumi bag again. The detective who eventually detected the luggage thief on the surveillance video sternly warned me that these thieves are targeting specific brands, and he said that they know exactly what they’re looking for. He said something like this, “On this day it was your Tumi. The day before it was a Louis Vuitton.” I said, “Yeah well he’d get a lot more for that Louis Vuitton than my used $700 bag.” The detective replied, “They don’t care about the bag. They care about what’s in the bag.” That was my big reality check. What would you do if you were me? Buy the bag I lost, or avoid it as a security precaution?”
How a pickpocket steals from a jacket hung on the back of a restaurant chair.
A strategist thief is one who creates his own opportunity, one who operates on a specific plan, one who steals with malice aforethought. The lowest strata of these are not much more than glorified opportunists. To me, though (and these are my definitions), an opportunist with a clever enough scheme gets a strategist rating.
Take Yacine, a north African illegal immigrant thief who works in Athens, Greece.
“I have a favorite technique to use in restaurants,” he told us, “but it only works in winter, when men hang their jackets on the backs of their chairs. I could show you, but I don’t have a jacket, and you don’t have a jacket. No one has a jacket in Athens in the summer.” He hunched his shoulders, raised his palms.
“We’ll go buy one,” Bob Arno said, and we had Yacine lead us to a men’s shop. There followed a hilarious scene in which a pickpocket selects a sport coat based on an analysis of its array of pockets. When a suitable jacket was purchased, Yacine chose a quiet café for our demonstration. Two of his colleagues joined us for lunch first, during which a cell phone rang.
Harik, 28, illegally visiting from Albania, pulled a phone out of his pocket and put it on the table. Then another, and another. He had half a dozen cell phones on the table before he found the ringing one. It had been a lucrative morning for Harik. He opened the back of the phone and pulled out its SIM card. The ringing stopped. Harik tore the tiny chip into shreds.
(An aside: want to buy a cell phone in Athens? Hundreds of men stand packed in a pedestrian shopping lane in the Plaka area, each displaying a phone or two. If you show interest in a man’s wares, he’ll pull from his pockets his other offerings, up to a dozen phones.)
“The new jacket is yours, but I need a jacket also, for this method,” Yacine said as he set the scene. “I’ll use a shirt for the demonstration.”
Pickpocket steals from jacket on cafe chair
He arranged Bob and me in bentwood chairs at a café table and ordered Greek coffee for us. He settled himself at the next table. Then, back to back with Bob, hand behind his back but hidden between the jackets, he snagged the wallet. I was facing him and saw nothing suspicious.
“You be the victim, Bob. Here’s the jacket. Put some euros in your wallet, empty is no good. Now put it in the new jacket. I don’t care which pocket! That is never something I decide. Now hang the jacket on the back of your chair. Perfect. Now, please. Have a seat. Drink your coffee.
“I will take the seat behind you so we are back to back. I have this shirt in my backpack, which I can use to simulate a jacket. I’ll hang it on the back of my chair. Now Bob, here is the secret: I will readjust the chairs so they are not exactly back to back. I’ll slide mine a little left or a little right. It doesn’t matter which way.
“Look now. I’m sitting right behind you. Our jackets are back to back on our chairs. I just slip my hand behind me and into your jacket. I don’t turn around. I can feel the pockets and quickly remove the wallet. See?
Cash is stolen from a wallet in a jacket pocket, without removing the wallet.
“You think that’s good? Thank you. Put the wallet back and I’ll show you something better. This is my best take. I will get the money only. I will not take the wallet. Just the money from it. It’s the same technique, but it takes a few seconds longer. Look now, I’ve got it!
“When I do this, the man never even knows. He thinks he spent the money somewhere. Very good, no?”
Yacine is an opportunist because he needs a fool for a mark, someone who’s left himself open. But he works with a strategy that gives him an advantage over the ordinary opportunist, so he has a wider field of potential victims. He’s more dangerous than his lesser fellows because he succeeds within the perceived shelter of upscale commercial establishments. He also has grander conceits. Yacine’s ultimate goal is America.
Bob and I have done this repeatedly for 15 years, always with more butterflies and apprehension than confidence. We haven’t let a tv crew down yet (but it’s bound to happen). So, with crew in tow, we resumed our research in Barcelona.
First, since many of the stolen smartphones are Apple iPhones, I visited the brand new Apple Store on Placa Catalunya, presuming that some victims would visit in the hope of retrieving their phones’ serial numbers. I was correct, store manager Mario told me, but “only a few per day. And no, Apple won’t help them obtain their serial numbers.” (You’d have to get to the computer with which you sync the phone, open iTunes, go to Preferences, choose the Devices tab, then hover your curser over the name of the device to see a popup that shows its serial number.)
Apple store, Barcelona
Next I returned to the police station to ask, are you serious? Really, if my phone is stolen, I can’t file a police report without its serial number? The officer on duty tried deflecting my question: “Do you have insurance?” he asked to each of my questions. I persisted until he confirmed: no serial number, no police report. Yes, you can go home and call in the serial number, but the police will not provide a copy of the police report by mail, fax, or email. What good is that?*
While at the police station, I couldn’t resist questioning the line of visitors waiting to report their thefts. iPhone stolen, iPhone stolen, iPhone stolen, etc., and two morose groups reporting that their accommodations had been burglarized. (One, a group of six Latvian students who lost multiple laptops, phones, and iPods, were devastated because as students, they couldn’t afford to replace them.) The victims kept coming and I couldn’t help but notice that the police station welcome mat was, literally, worn out. Pathetic.
One more question, Officer: this refusal to file a report without the phone’s serial number—is it just in Barcelona, or all of Spain? “All of Spain!” the officer assured me.
Barcelona police station entrance, where the welcome mat is literally worn out.
Next, with the RTL tv crew rolling, we traipsed through the Barrio Gotico and Born areas of Barcelona after midnight, swinging a fake iPad. I was terrified for Bob, the carrier and potential victim, due to the reports of violent snatching we’ve recently been hearing. Yet… no takers! We rested and gathered strength on gorgeous tapas and beer, setting out again through the dark lanes and creepy alleys, my brave husband willing to get mugged for television (not for the first time!).
Perhaps we were too large a group (five). Maybe we were just in the right place at the wrong time. Maybe thievery is closed on Monday nights.
Next day, we sat for hours at Cava La Universal, where we’d seen and filmed the clever smartphone thieves. We had a brilliant fake iPhone laid out temptingly on the table—like fresh bait still wriggling.
Immediately the waiter approached and pushed the phone closer to us on the table. “Don’t have it like that,” he warned, “the thieves will get it. They’re very, very fast. They’re very, very good!” We pushed it halfway back and gave him a wink.
Fake iPhone on our cafe table
The tv producer and I chatted and people-watched over coffee while I scrutinized humanity. I saw a few “suspects,” pointing them out to the producer. “Look at those two.” I pointed to “white-shoulders” and a pal as they walked away on La Rambla. They hadn’t come close to us. “Thieves, for sure,” I boldly pronounced. The tv producer believed me without evidence. Or maybe she didn’t.
An hour later Bob came to meet us at the cafe with the other producer and the cameraman. Guess who they had with them? “White shoulders” and his pal. And guess who they were? White-shoulders’ pal was the very phone-thief gang-leader I filmed one month ago! (Tattooed “Born to kill.”) This time, his partner, white-shoulders, was only 13 years old. I hadn’t recognized Born-to-kill as he passed by an hour before. I had only pegged him as a probably thief based on his and his partner’s body language and behavior.
Phone thieves with Bob Arno
Born-to-kill was in good spirits and willing to talk. Even on camera! He said he hadn’t tried to steal my iPhone because it looked fake. Liar! It looks damn real—in fact its case is real, but has a printed display. And anyway, he’d never came close enough to my table to see the iPhone. He and the child had passed at a distance. Born-to-kill’s name is Florin.
More in on this very soon.
*The benefit of filing a police report is that the theft is officially documented (supposedly), helping to show the government and the public the extent of the problem.
A kid, a computer, and a clever scam that games the system—that’s all it takes to make big bucks, without leaving home. For credit card fraudsters like the teenager who calls himself “d0g,” it’s simply online shopping. He doesn’t handle merchandise, cash checks, or visit drop spots. His butt never leaves his chair, his fingers never leave his keyboard, his eyes never leave his screen.
How fraud with a stolen credit card works
It’s all about shopping, according to Patrick Lambert, who poked around the underground “carder sites” that sell the information from stolen credit cards. Buy one for a few dollars and just go shopping! Well… not quite.
What’s a credit card fraudster to do: buy expensive goods online and have them shipped to his home? Certainly not. In his Interview with a malicious hacker making over $10,000 a week, [Edit 7/8/13: Lambert has taken down his fascinating and instructive article.] Lambert reports how easy it is to find and use these carder sites, and how to turn the hot credit card into hard cash:
So finally, the last question I had was how they manage to get actual, physical goods using that stolen credit card, without having to divulge their address. The way I was explained is that all he has to do is post ads on eBay for popular items that he doesn’t actually have. Then, when someone buys it, he turns around and buys that same item from some online store with the bought CC numbers, and puts the eBay buyer’s address as the shipping location. He makes those stores send the products directly to his buyers, and gets clean cash for them, which he can spend any way he wants. It’s a type of online money laundering. And apparently, the reason why these stolen numbers are sold so cheaply is because a vast majority of them are either already canceled, or maxed out.
Now I’m wondering about the wide-format pro printer I sold on Craig’s List: did I unwittingly sell it to an ID thief and obediently ship it to the innocent third party who supplied the thief with clean money? It could have worked that way, at least if I were a store that accepted credit card payments. In my case, I was paid via PayPal, and the funds cleared. Can a thief fund PayPal with a stolen credit card? I’m not sure…
You can see how this three-way scam works. An innocent and unsuspecting buyer of goods provides clean money in return for real items, and is none the wiser. A merchant sells items and is paid with a stolen credit card. d0g sits in the middle pulling strings and catching the money. Easy!
There’s much more to it though, Lambert learned from d0g. “Doing the crime, getting rich with stolen identities, is really easy. The hard part is covering your tracks, and 90% of the things these people do are for the sole purpose of covering themselves.”
That would include subscribing to a VPN (a secure and anonymous web tunnel), and funding an anonymous online payment system.
This sort of “hacking” (which is not what I would call it) can be done on a large or very small scale, but either way, easily, and causing serious financial damage. If it’s true that one credit card fraudster (like d0g, the teenager) can net over $10,000 a week with a low risk of getting caught, it’s clear that the vocation would attract legions of practitioners. It’s clear, too, that our payment system needs fixing.
* * *
12/22/15 Note to HACKERS: I appreciate when you contribute additional knowledge in the hundreds of comments below, but please realize that this post will not function as a message board for contacting each other. Check it out: all email addresses in the comments below have been deleted. This is done by a human (me), not a robot. So please save yourself (and me) the trouble. Do comment on credit card hacking, but don’t look for business here. Thanks —BV
Later note: Alas, I had to close comments on this post due to soliciting. However, there’s really interesting stuff below. Thanks for all the contributions!
Even later note: Looks like skimmers’ days may be numbered, thanks to the Skim Reaper, a credit card-sized detection device that we can dip into an ATM or POS before using it to determine its safety. Well, we won’t be using it any time soon, at a cost of almost $500, but let’s say maybe bank branch managers will check their machines periodically, and police can check random ATMs.
Barcelona police are eager to report a theft when they catch the thief and return the victim’s property—if the following story is any indication. Makes the statistics look good! Boosts police reputation, too! This just in from Pia, a German woman visiting Barcelona for the first time. For once, a story with a happy ending.
Something similar to those stories [on the Thiefhunters’ Barcelona Scams page] happened to me & my friend just yesterday. It was on our first trip to Barcelona & of course we’d been warned that there are a lot pickpockets around.
We went out to have dinner at Port Olímpic, had a lot of Sangria & were just about to return to our hotel at around 2.30. At a bus station on ‘Carrer d’Álaba’ two guys walked toward us. One of them seemed to be drunk, they chatted & laughed. The other one had already passed us when the first slender one blocked my way. He was smirking & didn’t let me pass by. Instead he suddenly started touching my breasts & I immediately knew we were surrounded. I tried to get him off & started running around the bus station to escape. My friend was so shocked she stood almost petrified on the sidewalk. In a split second the one harassing me ran off down the street when in the very same moment I heard my friend yell in shock & scream “Let go of my purse!”
The first man had tried to catch our attention so the other one had the chance to grab whatever we carried along!
We both followed him as fast as we could when he ran off into the opposite direction & around the corner. While my friend was wearing heels, I had taken mine off before all had started so I was faster but still too slow to catch up. (I now doubt that I would’ve had a chance against him if I had been faster. )
Just in this very moment (everything was happening so fast!) I heard another man yell something about the ‘bolso’ & saw a huge guy follow the thief. When I finally got around the second corner, the big one was holding my friend’s purse, talking fiercely to the other one. For a moment I thought they were partners but then I glimpsed the gun on the tall guy’s belt & saw him grabbing the thief at the wrist, pushing him up against the wall, telling me to stay ‘al forno’. He’d been a undercover cop!
About a minute later 2 police cars pulled up & one of the officers arrested the thief, handcuffs & all that!
My friend had finally caught up with the scene & the tall cop handed her the purse.
They asked us for names & IDs & reported the attack. Of course we were shaking all over & 2 of the police officers drove us back to the hotel, making sure we were okay & got back safe.
La Rambla, Barcelona
We had SO much luck, it’s unbelievable! Nothing was stolen & we got away with no more than a real shock. It’s really unbelievable how easily you can be a victim of crime, especially when you’re a female.?We couldn’t have prevented this from happening, that’s what the police told us, too. Those thieves were just too strong, my friend couldn’t have held on to her bag any tighter. I think it is scary to know you’re not safe anywhere from scams & attacks, not even 100m from your hotel.
But we were so very lucky to have someone help us!
God bless those brave policemen & god bless those amazingly fast & long legs of the guy who saved us! 😉
Thieves who operate on the principles of stealth, motion, or impedence strive to minimize contact with their victim. Zero face-time is their preference. Minimal body contact, zero notice, zero recognition. Other pickpockets, though, cause contact and use it to their advantage.
Bob Arno and I met one of these physical-types in 1997 in Tangier, Morocco. He claimed to be retired and agreed to talk about his former career, though he was reluctant to demonstrate his moves.
However, at the end of our interview, without explanation, he sort-of hugged Bob, bounced around on his toes a bit, and laughed like a hyena.
What Al’alla-the-pickpocket did in Tangier in 1997 was exactly what is referred to in Barcelona today as the Ronaldinho move. He gave a little hop and collided into Bob with a gentle force. He began to laugh idiotically, raising and lowering his head while he threw one arm around Bob’s back and clamped his shoulder in a friendly manner. His feet were dancing and shuffling, knocking into Bob’s foot and wrapping around his calf.
Bob had braced himself at the first instant of Al’alla’s “attack,” but he didn’t resist the peculiar, intimate behavior. Al’alla continued his rollicksome moves for a few seconds, then gave a great forward kick in the air as a final flourish, and stepped away from Bob.
Was that a Moroccan farewell?
We were deep within a labyrinthine medina, led to this opium den rendezvous by an unsavory guide. (The rest of the encounter is documented here.) I was doubtful about getting out with all our equipment, certain we’d be robbed, if not worse. When we finally did emerge from the maze of alleys, our guide grinned—but it looked like a leer.
“This from Al’alla,” he said, holding out the newspaper-stuffed prop wallet Bob carries. “He name-ed that dance ‘rugby-steal’.”
It was a slick move and, between the baffling behavior and all the physical contact, Bob never felt the extraction.
The Ronaldinho is the simplest of pickpocket attempts. A little friendly football play and who’s going to complain or suspect? If the thief fails, no big deal. He’ll move on and try again, improving his M.O. as he practices. It’s a starter theft technique for aspiring pickpockets.
Barcelona gets a large number of illegal immigrants from North Africa. When they can’t work, some resort to pocket picking. The Ronaldinho is their basic training. It succeeds often enough, and is endlessly repeatable.
Barcelona gets a large number of young visitors. They’re easy-going, gullible, not suspicious. They want to like the locals, but they can’t tell who’s an outsider. The harmless moment of universal bonding through sports takes them by surprise but is not offensive.
Al’alla had become a pickpocket as a child in Tangier, then traveled to Barcelona for the big time. It was the sixties, and while Tangier reveled in flower power and hippie freedom, its drugs were routed to Europe through Spain. Al’alla found picking pockets far more lucrative and infinitely safer than drug trafficking. People carried cash then, not plastic, and naiveté in travelers was more prevalent than sophistication. On La Rambla, people strolled like clots through an artery. No one suspected the darting figure of a well-dressed gentleman, so obviously in a hurry, as he ricocheted off the moving mob.
One of Barcelona’s working pickpockets demonstrates the “football steal” on Bob, before it was named the “Ronaldinho.” Although he’s in front of Bob here, he reaches around to Bob’s back pocket and finishes with a tug at the pants hem.
A year or so after meeting Al’alla, we spoke with another Ronaldinho practitioner.
We’d been watching a couple of clumsy pickpockets as they snuck a wallet from a German tourist’s backpack. But before the thief could move away, he fumbled and dropped the wallet.
The victim wheeled around. Instantly, the pickpocket bent and picked up the wallet, politely offering it to his unwitting mark, who thanked him. They shook hands. The thieves drifted away, back on the prowl. First we asked the German: your backpack was zipped—how do you think your wallet fell out? “I have no idea,” he replied, unwilling to dwell on the incident.
We left him with his perplexity and caught up with the rogue pair, asking if they spoke a little English. Very little. French? Oui, they were Algerian.
“We are not police,” Bob began in French, “but we saw you take the man’s wallet.”
“Oh, no, monsieur dropped it!”
“We want to know your specialty, what kind of stealing you’re best at. For research!”
“Oui, research!” The men laughed nervously, but made no move to leave us. They glanced at each other, then suddenly, the taller of the two, the one who’d done the stealing, slung his arm around Bob’s shoulders. Taking quick, tiny steps in place, he twisted his body left and right.
“Play soccer? Football?” He moved his legs against Bob’s as if to trip him.
Bob stiffened, aware of the maneuver, this playful sports trick. But he had a real wallet in his back pocket, containing real money. He couldn’t allow the tactic to play out. He slapped his hand over his back pocket, trapping the thief’s hand in his grip.
“Enough!” Bob said.
“No football, eh? No research.” The thief transferred his embrace to his partner, and the two ambled off.
Late the same afternoon Bob and I both zeroed in on a well-dressed gentleman in a beige sport jacket. We tracked him at a distance until he disappeared in a crowd. We ran to catch up and burst into the moving crowd a moment too late. Our suspect was down on one knee, brushing and shaking the lower pant leg of his startled victim. He rose and apologized, as if he’d been trying to help.
The victim thanked him, but didn’t know what for. He was dazed and befuddled when I accosted him, asking brusquely if he still had his money. He felt his front pants pocket. No! It was gone! $2,000! His head swiveled wildly, but the thief was gone.
“He wanted to play football!” the victim said, “Right there in the crowd!”
Our multi-talented Barcelona pickpocket acquaintance later demonstrated the soccer swipe for us, this friendly male-on-male distraction technique. Side-to-side shoulder hug, a little leg-play, a little shake of the pant leg, and the wallet is gone, all in good fun. This was way back in August 2001, before the technique was named Ronaldinho.
In our 19-year worldwide thiefhunting experience, Ronaldinho seems to be a technique specific to North Africans, practiced by them wherever they may work. But that doesn’t mean they get away with it everywhere.
Many pickpocket methods are universal. Specialized techniques emerge from a specific population, travel with their practitioners, and are eventually taken up by other local thieves. Barcelona’s pigeon poop ploy is one of those—it came out of South America as a general “dirty-him-clean-him M.O., and was brilliantly adapted to blame the city’s birds. This movement of methods fascinates Bob and me as we study criminal subcultures around the world.
We must also keep in mind Barcelona’s symbiotic reputation. To visitors it’s fun and loose, good for partying late into the night. Pickpockets come specifically because they know of its loose legal system, and because it’s full of fun-loving tourists who party into the night.
I met the elderly British victim moments after her bag was stolen. She’d been sitting on the beach in Alicante, Spain, eating potato chips. Her bag was right beside her. She lowered her head for a moment, just long enough to stare at her watch—she can’t see a thing without her glasses, which were in her bag. In that moment, her bag was taken.
It was 2 p.m. on her last day in Spain.
As I walked the woman to her hotel spa where she hoped to find her husband, she tried in vain to keep the tears from flowing. She was in a panic about her glasses and getting through airports without them. I had to brief the husband, because by then the woman had lost her composure.
A policeman had written down the address where the woman could go to file a report. Do you think she’ll get in a cab and go? No, I don’t either. If anything, she’ll find a quickie glasses shop and get some distance lenses that will see her safely home. She won’t get the bifocals like those she lost, though.
The cop said he’d guess there are about five reports a day of beach bag theft. We know the elderly Brit who can’t see isn’t going to file a report. What about the twenty-something with her boyfriend? The two guys on the prowl? The cruise ship passenger who has to be back onboard at 4:00? How many will file police reports?
The beach-shack soda-seller thought he’d recognize five or six of the area’s regular bag thieves. Are there more? How many bags does each steal in a day?
The cop defined the technique as he understands it. The perp targets a bag and creeps close with his towel or blanket. He waits for the bag’s owner to move away. He covers the bag with his towel or blanket and makes off with the hidden treasure.
Not rocket surgery.
Not the only way, either. Look at our poor British victim. She didn’t leave. She didn’t nap. She just looked away.
Bags. Like wallets and smartphones, they have legs.
