Buy-a-Brick (continued from Part 3)

(The making of ABC 20/20: Bait-and-Switch)

The lawlessness of Naples stunned us all. Even Bob and I, who have been there many, many times, were newly amazed at the reckless race of vehicles.

“They say the traffic lights are merely a suggestion,” our Roman driver laughed as he pulled to an abrupt halt. “Here we are.”

We had only a morning to shoot the scene and, as we hadn’t made an appointment with the con men, we’d need luck as well as efficiency. Would they be working? Would we find them on the corners we know of? Would there be any ships in port, full of potential suckers? Bob and I felt the pressure. We’d brought a network news crew all the way to Naples with no certainty whatsoever.

By 9:00 a.m. we were rigged and ready. Bob directed our driver to park at the ferry terminal, where hydrofoils depart for Capri. A small cruise ship was just tying up. That was a good sign.

I banished Bob to the wrong side of the street. Since we had brazenly filmed here several months before, it was possible they’d recognize him. No visible video cameras, we specified, or they’d never offer the sale. We must all be extremely cautious because we don’t know how an angry Napolitano crook might react. Neither do we know if any of the others loitering on the corner are their thugs. What we do know about is the proliferation of mafia gangs in Naples, their turf wars, and their violence.

From the maritime terminal parking lot, we observed the opposite side of the street with binoculars. A large news kiosk hulked on the corner, open for business as usual.

ABC 20/20’s investigative reporter Arnold Diaz and I crossed to the corner where we hoped to find our prey, who’d hope to prey on us. The rest of the crew trailed us at a distance. First we paused at the news kiosk. With hundreds of magazines on display, it would be good for at least ten minutes, time in which we could scrutinize the characters who hung around. Most were selling knock-off watches and showed their wares eagerly.

I noticed two scooters parked on the sidewalk. Both had roomy, lockable storage bins perched on the back. Aha! These, I knew, were where the con men kept their props. Another good sign. Of course, scooters are everywhere in Naples; these could belong to anyone.

Arnold and I moved halfway down the block and examined a shop window full of watches. Our corner seemed quiet. Other than fake Rolexes and cheap leather jackets, there were no deals to be had. Perhaps it was too early. We ambled back toward the magazine stand, wishing for a proposition.

“Cellphone?” A middle-aged man held out a shiny new-model Nokia. “Try! Call your home. I sell cheap.”

“Really? I can try it?” Arnold looked around to be sure the camera crew was in position. “How do I call America?”

“I don’t know, better call Italy,” the man said.

“I don’t know anyone in Italy,” Arnold said. “But it works? I believe you.”

After a little negotiation we settled on a price. $200 for two cellphones. “We can call each other, honey!” I said to Arnold, as he counted out cash. He counted slowly, giving Glenn Ruppel, our segment producer, and Jill Goldstein, our hidden camera expert, time to move into position to catch the switch. The two looked so completely innocent, standing there against a shop window, not ten feet from us. Glenn’s eyes roved everywhere as he pretended to be in an intense conversation on his cellphone. Jill seemed to be bored waiting for him. She looked down at her sneaker, turning her foot a bit as if examining the shoe. In fact, Jill was not looking at her shoe. She was looking into a hole cut in the top of her fanny pack, in which she had a video monitor. Jill had hidden button-sized cameras in the side of her clothing, in order to face away from the action. With the monitor, she could check that she was positioned correctly. Bob was across the street, watching the same scene he’d seen so many times before.

The salesman put the two phones in a box and looked around for his colleague, who came trotting over with transformers. They added these to the box, closed it, and put the box in a translucent plastic shopping bag. The salesman tied a tight knot in the bag.

Arnold handed over the money.

“Have you visited the castle?” the salesman asked, and pointed across the street to the thirteenth century Castel Nuovo. His English wasn’t too good, but he got his point across. He pointed, and our eyes couldn’t help but follow his broad gesture. In that instant, we knew, he and his accomplice swapped bags.

“Did they get it?” Arnold asked me. I glanced over at Glenn, still rapt in his phony phone conversation. He waggled one hand. What does that mean?! Sort of? A little? Don’t know? What to do now? We couldn’t very well back up and replay the scene. Arnold took the knotted bag and the deal was done. There was no hand-shaking.

Grinning, Arnold immediately began to untie the bag. The salesman and his colleague, watching warily, hurried away. Arnold tore open the box and looked inside. A water bottle. No cellphones.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Come back! Stop!”

The two men jumped onto their scooters and roared off into the crazy Naples traffic.

The five of us reconvened.

“Did you get it?” Arnold asked eagerly.

“I don’t know, we’re not sure.” Jill and Glenn said.

“Why don’t we try to interview a police officer,” Bob suggested. “They’re all around us. Let’s see how they react when we show them the water bottle.”

“Good idea,” Arnold said.

We walked across the street to the passenger ship terminal, where we thought there might be a chance of finding an officer who spoke a little English. No luck, but with Bob’s mixture of languages and the water bottle in the box as evidence, they understood perfectly.

“Allora,” the officer said, and threw up his hands. It was the all-purpose Italian expression that here, now, meant: idiots! you get what you pay for!

[This series on bait-and-switch started here.]

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

Chapter Eight: Con Artists and Their Games of No Chance

Souvenir Sucker

Our friend Russell, a magician, works a considerable amount of time each year in Asia. A streetwise New Yorker, he knows pretty much all the tricks played from the East Coast to the Far East.

Russell was in Bali recently, between jobs. He was on a bus crowded with tourists when traffic ground to a halt. The morning was sweltering. Windows were open. Occasional clouds of dust wafted in, more welcome than rain, which would force the closing of windows and bring the interior humidity to Beverly Hills spa levels.

As traffic slowed, then stopped, a raging hoard of pleading faces surrounded the bus. Vendors reached up to the open windows offering their wares. Wood carvings, silver jewelry, and stamped batik sarongs danced in the windows like props in a puppet show. Vendors had only desperate moments to tempt these tourists before they and their dollars vanished down the road.

Always a sucker for souvenirs, Russell scrutinized the merchants, looking for something new. He was not disappointed. He noticed an intricately carved something glowing in the sunlight as its hawker flourished it. The expert salesman caught Russell’s interest and pushed his way near. He proffered his wares for inspection. It was a hollow piece of bone—cow or sheep, Russell guessed—carved with delicate figures in classic Indonesian poses. So thin, it was, the light shone through the bone in warm amber tones.

“Twenty dollar,” the vendor said, scratching a long dark scar on his neck.

“I’ll give you five,” said Russell.

“Ten.”

“Okay, ten.” Russell reached for his wallet and took out an American ten while the vendor wrapped the bone and passed it through the window.

The bus began to move and the vendors scattered reluctantly, some trotting alongside the bus for another hopeful moment. Soon the bus picked up speed and the locals were left in the dust.

Pleased with his find, Russell unrolled his carving from its plastic bag. He stared at it.

It had looked so much finer a moment ago. Now, the blocky figures hacked into the bone felt sharp against his fingers. The delicate details were gone. He held it up to the light. No glow.

Cheated!, Russell thought. They got me, a world-wise New Yorker. He rewrapped his booby prize and looked out at the passing lime-green terraced rice fields, the tall spirit houses, and offerings to the gods placed in the roadside gutters with care.

We ran into Russell in Bali as someone else might bump into a coworker at the grocery store. Together, we strolled along the waterfront of Cape Sari and through an open-air market. Fat pigs and goats lay suckling their broods beside stacks of bamboo furniture, while chickens stood waiting for sale, one to a bell-shaped woven basket. Souvenir t-shirts hung limply above varnished seashells and carved Buddha heads. Postcards outnumbered food items. Just a few years before, we remembered, only eggs and cloth were sold here. As we browsed and wandered, Russell told us about his morning rip-off and, laughing, promised to show us his white elephant.

“Shit! There’s the guy!” Russell pointed and, there, unbelievably, was the man with the scar on his neck, offering the same beautiful piece of carved bone. The three of us watched with fascination as the man made a sale, as he pulled a plastic bag out of his cloth satchel and adroitly swapped artifacts.

It was the classic bait-and-switch, expertly performed. Russell grinned, not at all displeased at having been duped this way.

“He’s a magician!” he said. “Did you see how he used misdirection? Fucking great!”

For a highly skilled young street performer, Russell has been known to toss ten bucks into a hat, and that’s all he’d paid this con man earlier. But he wasn’t quite satisfied.

He strode up to the shyster who, of course, didn’t recognize him at all.

“How much?” Russell asked, and the two repeated their earlier negotiations. Bob and I watched from a distance.

“You don’t have to wrap it,” Russell said, when they’d agreed on a price.

The vendor’s face fell. “Yes, must wrap!”

“No. Besides, I want this one.” Russell held onto the fine sample.

“And the guy started to panic,” Russell told us later, with absolute glee. “And behind me, another vendor, a woman, began to laugh and point at us. You could tell she was happy to see this guy getting caught.” Russell was laughing so hard he could hardly talk. Now he flourished the fine bone carving as the vendor had, triumphant. The sun was low and glowed through the delicate design of the salesman’s floor sample.

“I’m gonna put them side by side on a shelf,” he told us, “one beautiful, one crude, and a story to go with them.”

[This Bait-and-Switch series started here. More in the next post.]

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

Chapter Eight: Con Artists and Their Games of No Chance

Buy-a-Brick (continued from Part 1)

Our first clear capture of the actual swap occurred on a sidewalk. The partners were running after their customer, afraid they’d lost the sale. They did the switch behind him, right out in the open. It’s beautiful in slow motion, like world-class magic. You see the “magician’s assistant” hand over one sack, turn, and tuck an identical one under his jacket.

When the sale had been concluded, Bob told the victim he’d just been swindled. The man didn’t think twice. He turned and bolted down the street, caught the con men, and got his money back, no questions asked.

In later visits to Naples, as our equipment improved, we used tiny hidden cameras with remote controls. This allowed us to get the ultimate exposés, including the scenes we helped capture for ABC 20/20.

Eventually, we were introduced to a trio of swap-thieves. I was waiting on a corner with Luciano-the-tram-thief while Bob fetched a translator. He was gone forever, it seemed. Meanwhile, it was my job to entertain Luciano and keep him from disappearing, from going back to work. We tried talking, but both of us were frustrated.

“Pacco,” Luciano said, pointing toward Bait-and-Switch-Central where a few men offered video cameras and cellphones to innocent but greedy foreigners. He waved them over. I tensed, wondering if they’d recognize me, worried about what Luciano was telling them about us. These were mobsters, intimidating men impervious to laws. “Pacco,” Luciano said again, indicating the three men who each had an electronic item in his hand, and I understood that pacco, Italian for package, was the slang term for their swindle. Also, that they all spoke rudimentary English.

“I am Davide,” one of the pacchi said, “and my friend is Guiddo and he is Giandamo.” I was obliged to shake their hands.

“Amigos, four years,” I told them, patting Luciano’s arm. Luciano said something in Napolitano and they all nodded. The pacchi told me that they “change” packages. I said I know, they sell water, or salt. They laughed. I was dizzy with conflicting emotions: high on being “inside” this fraternity of impermeable criminals, and full of fear and revulsion at the same time. With a jovial facade, I took a camera bag from one of them and made a show of tugging a zipper on it, as if it couldn’t be opened. They laughed again, knowing I was referring to the trick of gluing or melting zippers to delay the discovery of the scam.

We struggled with conversation until a few tourists wandered over and the pacchi pounced, pitching their wares. I got instant sweat in my armpits and a heartbeat in my throat. They caught my eye and I gave a barely perceptible nod. Inside, I was petrified. They carried on, eyes flicking back to see that I wouldn’t interfere with their scam. I couldn’t believe they let me stay in the vicinity. One piercing look and I would have fled.

Their quarry eventually decided against the purchase and walked away. The pacchi waited an instant, then ran after the mark making the switch without cover, in front of my watching eyes, and calling behind the mark: “Papa, papa,” hoping now to make the sale at any ridiculous price.

Bob returned just then with an aura of urgency that dominated my attention; the pacchi scene faded out like a movie transition. Officially introduced now, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to film the Naples switcheroo again.

What astounds us most about Naples’ bait-and-switch game is not the fact that it occurs right out in the open in full view of surrounding residents and businesses. Nor is it the perpetuation, the reliability of finding these guys on the same corner, year after year. Nor is it the fact that they haven’t been bashed up by a returning pack of angry victims.

No, it’s that the crime is committed smack under the noses of Naples’ law enforcement agencies. It is, apparently, tolerated, at the least.

The primary location of bait-and-switch activity is directly across the street from the city’s maritime terminal. Visiting cruise ship passengers congregate in the area, and must traverse the corner to walk anywhere. They usually pause there, either gathering the nerve to cross the wild traffic, or recovering from just having done so. Other people are in the area to catch ferries to Capri, Sorrento, or Ischia. There on Via Cristoforo Colombo, tourists and, presumably others, are scrutinized by Marine Police sentries. Naples’ City Police patrol by car and, in packs of five, on foot. There is also the Falchi Squad, the civilian-dressed motorcycle cops who look for “micro-crime.” All these, and the republic’s military force, are usually present on this intersection.

Yet, with all but a nod and a wink, the fearless mobsters carry on.

[Continues in the next post.]

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

Chapter Eight: Con Artists and Their Games of No Chance