How pickpockets steal from inside jacket pockets

Kharem shows how the pickpocket's partner then comes from the front, dipping into the breast pocket while the vic looks in the opposite direction. How pickpockets steal from inside jacket pockets. steal from breast pocket
Pickpocket Kharem gets the victim to look back at his right shoulder. Meanwhile, his left hand opens the victim's left front jacket, exposing the breast pocket. How pickpockets steal from inside jacket pockets. steal from breast pocket
Pickpocket Kharem gets the victim to look back at his right shoulder. Meanwhile, his left hand opens the victim’s left front jacket, exposing the breast pocket.

How pickpockets steal from inside jacket pockets usually involves the application of something disgusting, much like the pigeon poop pickpocket does. Occasionally, they use a baby—not to apply the gunk, but to stick its little hand into the male victim’s breast pocket.

Kharem shows how the pickpocket's partner then comes from the front, dipping into the breast pocket while the vic looks in the opposite direction. How pickpockets steal from inside jacket pockets. steal from breast pocket
Kharem shows how the pickpocket’s partner then comes from the front, dipping into the breast pocket while the vic looks in the opposite direction.
Bambi plays the distractor while Kharem does the dipping. How pickpockets steal from inside jacket pockets. steal from breast pocket
Bambi plays the distractor while Kharem does the dipping.

A man’s inside breast pocket is one of the safest from pickpockets. It’s one of the hardest pockets to steal from because it’s in front, up close, in a sensitive area. Unless, of course, the jacket is hanging on the back of a chair—then it’s a piece of cake.

Clever strategist pickpockets tap directly into their victims’ emotions, the hard-wired ick factor being a useful one. Bob Arno described how, as a youth, he was “stunned at the callousness of using the primeval emotion, fear, to accomplish distraction”:

“In the early sixties leprosy was still a serious threat to the populations of India and Pakistan. It was common to see sufferers in various stages of deterioration roaming the streets of Karachi, Calcutta, Bombay, and New Delhi. Banding together, they often surrounded Western visitors coming out of banks, hotels, and churches. The sight of an outstretched hand with missing or rotting fingers usually caused people to react with horror and drop some coins, if for no other reason to get the infected limbs to go away. Compassion and revulsion metamorphosed into currency. The ploy was effective, diabolical, and unique to Pakistan and the Indian subcontinent.”

This daring face-to-face technique used to steal from inside jacket pockets, no matter how brief and fleeting, is not for every thief. It takes a certain coolness to step up to your potential victim, show him a close-up of your face, and slide your hands all over his body, like a tailor. The pickpocket keeps track of multiple streams: he’s eliciting the ick factor, acting the good Samaritan, and setting up a stealthy steal literally right under the vic’s nose. He’s probably watching out for police and witnesses at the same time. He’s probably sweating.

It doesn’t always work:

Indian Shit Trick
“We were about to cross the street in Delhi,” a British traveler told me. “It was very crowded, people pushing and going in every direction. We stepped off the curb between some parked cars which were very close together. I was just concentrating on getting through them and across the street. A man bumped into my husband as we were squeezing between the cars. He followed as we crossed the street, and as we reached the other side, he pointed to my husband’s shoe. ‘Shit,’ he said. We looked down and saw it. It was shit on my husband’s shoe. The man offered to help us clean it off, but we thought we knew what he was up to. We thought it was a scam. We’d heard that they do that, then demand huge sums of money in payment, and they don’t let you go until you pay. So we said no, and walked away with shit on the shoe.”

How pickpockets steal from inside jacket pockets

Of course [the prolific and multi-talented Barcelona pickpocket] Kharem has a version of this one. He had led us into a seedy alley, long, dim, and deserted, eager to demo, at Bob’s request, his expertise on inside jacket pockets.

“I don’t want to go much further in this direction,” I said, chicken as usual.

“Don’t worry,” our interpreter soothed me. “I know where we are.” That was Terry Jones, our Barcelona-based friend and bag-snatch authority.

Kharem stopped at a graffitied niche where a stone water fountain was the sole feature.

The only jacket among the four of us on this warm spring afternoon was Kharem’s prop, the “tool” he used over his arm. He put the jacket on Terry and took a fat brown wallet from his own pocket.

“Whose is that?” I asked him.

“Mine!” he laughed, and put it in Terry’s inside breast pocket. I should have asked whose was it.

“Wait till these people pass.” A couple ambled toward us, oblivious to all but themselves.

“Shall I do it on those tourists?” Kharem asked.

“Noooo, we’ll wait,” Bob said, and the rest of us laughed nervously.

“It takes two people,” Kharem explained. “One spits into his hand, then applies the spit onto the victim’s right shoulder.” Standing behind Terry, he showed how to “help” the victim by pointing out the mess. After indicating the shoulder to Terry, who couldn’t see that far behind him, Kharem grasped the upper right sleeve with his right hand and Terry’s left lapel with his left. With both hands, he twisted the jacket slightly around to the right.

This accomplished two necessities. It successfully turned Terry’s attention far to his right, and it intentionally made vulnerable Terry’s left inside breast pocket. With perfect timing, the “pick” of the pair, approaching from the front, would then have free access to the wallet.

How pickpockets steal from inside jacket pockets.
It’s hard not to like Kharem in conversation, but we remind ourselves: he’s a thief.

Kharem suggested I be the spitting Samaritan and, as Bob filmed and Terry cooperated, we easily stole the wallet. Kharem high-fived his new partner.

“Eeew,” I said, pulling my hand away. His was wet.

“It’s not spit!” he said. “It’s from the water fountain!” I hadn’t noticed that he’d gotten a quick drink.

Spit, shit, what’s the difference? The object is to apply a substance that the victim wants off now. Something disgusting, something staining, something smelly. In New York they use mustard. In London ice cream. Mix and match. The strategist has created his opportunity complete with an excuse to get up close and personal…to touch…to take.

Adapted from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Seven: Scams—By the Devious Strategist

© Copyright 2008-2013 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

The Unattended Purse

Purse hanging on baby stroller
Purse hanging on baby stroller
Purse hanging on baby stroller

Just a little reminder to women…

A thief needs only a few seconds to assume ownership of unattended riches. Those few seconds are easily found when a woman leaves her handbag in a shopping cart or baby stroller. In the time it takes to select a ripe avocado, the bag is gone and out the door.

Don’t let go of your purse!

Joyce Lerner of Miami Beach had her wallet filched from her purse while shopping in her neighborhood supermarket. It was half an hour before she got to the checkstand and realized it—an obvious window of opportunity for the thief to use her credit cards. When she reported the incident, police told her they were well-aware of gangs that came to Miami Beach every winter and worked many different supermarkets.

Shoe stores in strip malls along the Las Vegas Strip are prime locales for larcenists looking for ignored bags. In fact shoe shops everywhere beckon to the opportunist. Shoe shopping is serious business, I know, and requires intense focus. Selecting, fitting, walking across the shop, admiring, and—where’s your purse?

And, victims tell me that beauty and nail salons are targeted by thieves. Some women become relaxed and distracted, and neglect their belongings inside, or leave their purses in their cars so they won’t ruin their newly done nails. Leave it to an opportunist to exploit a loophole.

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

Chapter Five: Rip-Offs: Introducing…the Opportunist

© Copyright 2008-2013 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

Interview in an Opium Den – Pickpockets in Morocco

Al'alla, a retired pickpocket in Tangier
Pickpockets in Morocco. Al'alla, a retired pickpocket in Tangier
Al’alla, a retired pickpocket in Tangier

In a dim, smoky opium den, we faced the backlit profile of the Moroccan pickpocket. He barely looked at us, concentrating instead on our interpreter. Steaming glasses of sweet mint tea sat before us, packed with fresh leaves of brilliant green. Bob waited to sip his tea until I was half finished with mine—to see if I keeled over, I imagined.

We had come to the medina in Tangier in search of a pickpocket, and our hired guide had found him. Al’alla was hunched over a newspaper at the front table in the cave-like café, the only spot within bright enough for reading. After ushering us into chairs and ordering our tea, our guide and translator, Ma’halla, spoke in rapid Arabic to Al’alla: “Don’t say a word of English, my friend. Let me do all the talking. Just answer my questions in Arabic and we’ll both have money for the smoke tonight.” Well, he could have said that; but it soon became clear that Al’alla had been a skilled pickpocket in his day.

Questions tumbled eagerly from Bob, but Al’alla was no easy subject. Perhaps embarrassed by his miscreant days, he skittered and skirted the core of his story. Bob prodded, encouraged, and teased until he finally found the appropriate tool for extraction. With the glibness of a talk-show host and the sincerity of a confidence man, he proffered the camaraderie and respect of a colleague. Bob’s disingenuous smile and elegant canards came effortlessly, as if from a spurious rogue. Al’alla relaxed and, perhaps followed suit.

Pickpockets in Morocco

Al’alla had honed his talent 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, Barcelona’s broad and proud promenade, people strolled like clots through an artery. Kiosks of birds, flowers, and newspapers crowded the avenue. Parrots squawked, pigeons cooed, fragrances of cut lilies and hot paella wafted on the air—it’s still like that today. No one suspected the darting figure of a well-dressed gentleman, so obviously in a hurry, as he ricocheted off the moving mob.

Al’alla in his 50s still had a handsome face, though its several scars suggested a rough past. He was small and wiry with delicate hands. His soft-spoken manner and gentle composure alluded to the pretender’s persona he got away with in his furtive past. Today he worked as an electrician, and his handful of tools lay on the table as we spoke.

I’d been more than a little worried when Ma’halla first led us through the bewildering high-walled alleys of the old city. It wasn’t long before I realized we’d never find our way out alone. Was the medina really this big, or was Ma’halla confusing us with tricky detours? We lost all sense of direction.

The busy souk, with its colorful stalls of spices, brass pots, and rugs, gave way to vegetable sellers who sat on the ground shelling peas, defeathering hens, stripping mint leaves. Then there were only blind alleys, closed doors, and the occasional Arab hurrying past in his long, sweeping djellabah.

Ma’halla was not particularly savory: his face, too, was scarred, and the few teeth he possessed were red with rot. Big and muscular, he wore a cap pulled low over his bloodshot eyes. His English was good though, and he exuded a wary confidence that suited his mission.

The unnamed café was a hang-out for small-time crooks and drug addicts. A few strung-out characters packed their pipes behind us asContinue reading

Pickpocket beggars

Pickpocket Gamila, in Barcelona
Pickpocket beggars: Gamila
Pickpocket Gamila

On the heels of the Louvre pickpocket debacle, here’s a profile of two exuberant Roma women pickpocket beggars who tell us how they do it, who their favorite victims are, and why. They also told us how they accomplish a quick-change on the run after a theft: “I take out my ponytail,” Gemila said, “and put on lipstick.”

In Chapter One of my book, I describe how Maritza and Ravenna, children in Rome, pretend to beg under a sheet of newspaper. In Barcelona, Nezira and Gamila carry big slabs of cardboard, roughly torn from a carton. On it, scrawled in Spanish, is “No work. No money. No eat. Thank you for some money.”

The women, 31 and 28 years old, shove the cardboard horizontally into the waist area of their target and look up with enormous eyes. Under the cardboard their nimble fingers open fanny packs and rummage through pockets, unseen by their owners.

“These two are this city’s most prolific pickpocket pair,” Police officer Giorgio Pontetti told us when he sat in on our interview of them.

How is one to know desperation from deception, mendicants from impostors? One begs to eat, another begs to steal. The impostors, those who steal under the pretense of begging, can be found all across southern Europe. Some attempt to tug at heartstrings with scribbled claims of being refugees, and perhaps they are. Others have given up pretenses altogether, keeping the cardboard but omitting the written request for money. For them, any prop will do: a map, a section of old newspaper, an infant.

Yes, even an infant. A sleepy baby in a sling on the chest well communicates hunger and need. And if the woman with the baby comes close enough, the baby will act as a shield for her hands. It’s not uncommon for these babies to be in the midst of nursing at their mothers’ bare breast: all the more distracting to the victim. Irreverent? Perhaps. Deceitful? Absolutely.

Finally, it is frequently claimed that these women will sometimes toss their babies at their victims, which distracts the victims to an extreme and occupies their hands at the same time. Although we’ve heard it said many times, we cannot substantiate the assertion.

Pickpocket beggars

Beggar-thieves Nezira and Gamila had it all figured out. They had plopped their slender bodies into childlike positions on the ground, cross-legged, and dropped their jackets into a heap beside them. They were both pretty, with long dark hair and teenage faces. They squirmed restlessly, fidgeted, and repeatedly glanced up to Officer Pontetti for encouragement and approval.

Bob Arno interviews pickpocket beggars Nazira (left) and Gamila
Bob Arno interviews Nazira (left) and Gamila

“I go up to people,” Gamila explained. “If they say go away because they know I am going to steal from them, we just go away.” She shook her bangs out of her eyes. “But if they seem to be innocent, then I will go for them. They have no idea that I’m a bad person and want to steal money.”

Pickpocket beggars: Gemila
Gemila

Gamila grinned, hideously transforming her pretty face into a week-old jack-o’lantern’s as she revealed her rotten teeth. She lit a cigarette.

“Japanese are hardest to steal from because they always throw up their hands and step aside,” Nezira said. “They don’t want to have anything to do with us, so it’s hard to get close. They don’t want to get involved.”

Pickpocket beggars Nezira and Gamila
Pickpockets Nezira and Gamila

“Germans are so-so. Americans are difficult, but they have so many dollars!” Gamila laughed with embarrassment at her own daring, dipped her head, and looked at Nezira. Nezira giggled, then both fell apart, as if they couldn’t maintain seriousness for more than a few minutes at a time.

Pickpocket beggars: Gamila demonstrates her cardboard pickpocket method.
Gamila demonstrates her cardboard pickpocket method

They’re serious on the job, though. Bob used a lipstick camera which, as its name implies is the size of a lipstick, to film a similar duo. We put money-sized cut paper into an envelope, put the envelope in a fanny pack, and zipped the pouch closed. Bob wore it. Soon enough, a pair of women approached us making kissing faces, an odd combination of worried eyebrows, pursed lips, and pleading eyes. One’s cupped, begging hand steadied the cardboard balanced on her other arm. Bob held his little wide-angle lens at hip height. Under the cardboard, the film showed, the beggar-thief opened the fanny pack, removed the envelope, and closed the zipper. With a final mimed kiss and the envelope hidden beneath their cardboard, the pair wandered away.

Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. Was this M.O. used in the mid-1700s when the Mother Goose rhyme was written? Perhaps it was originally “beggar man-thief.”

When the two women saw us again half an hour later, they gave us the finger.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Five: Rip Offs: Introducing…The Opportunist

© Copyright 2008-2013 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

Traveling? Don’t be Self-Ripped

A taxi in Chennai, India.
A taxi in Chennai, India.
A taxi in Chennai, India.

Pickpockets, thieves, and con artists aren’t to be blamed for all losses. When you travel, don’t rip yourself off due to ignorance or naiveté.

So you’ve done your research, studied up on foreign currency, and made the long-awaited journey to elsewhere. After touchdown, you trudge through immigration with no surprises. You have whatever visas are required, perhaps your yellow immunization card, onwards tickets, proof of transfer tax or visa fees paid, whatever foreign officials can throw at you. Now you need a taxi.

Who knows if you’ll find an organized taxi queue or a pack of hustlers? Chances are, your research has suggested that you only use official taxis and agree on a rate before stepping in. Taxis can be a traveler’s first rip-off. Try to get a vague idea of what the charge should be, airport to hotel. Your hotel may be able to tell you via email before you leave home, or your travel agent; at the least, ask at an information booth in the airport when you arrive. Still, you can’t always protect yourself from unscrupulous practices.

For example: the tired traveler flies into flower-filled Changi Airport and instantly feels at ease. It’s neat, clean, functional, and aesthetic. Rules are adhered to in Singapore. The streets are as safe to walk as the tap water is to drink. What sort of thief can operate in such an ostensive utopia?

The traveler collects his luggage and changes a little money at the airport booth, then jumps into a taxi to his hotel. “Fifteen dollars,” the driver might say as he pulls up to Raffles or the Regent or the Mandarin; and in most cases, the visitor pays and that is that.

Many American tourists’ first sense of Singapore is not at all that of an exotic Oriental land, but rather, that the place resembles the modern city in which they live. Therefore, a surprising number of American tourists happily, ignorantly, accidentally pay their taxi fare in U.S. dollars. What taxi driver will refuse an instant bonus of thirty percent? That tourist has been self-ripped, so to say, and the driver is hardly to blame.

More cunning, though, is the driver or shop clerk who recognizes your naiveté and slips some worthless or worth-less money into your change. This happened to me once in Singapore. A taxi driver put a few Malaysian bills into the stack of Singapore bills he gave me as change. The pink Malaysian bills look remarkably similar to the pink Singaporean ten-dollar notes. So similar, in fact, that the passing of them could have been just an accident. But the ten-ringgit Malaysian notes were worth less than half the value of the Singaporean tens.

Other self-rips include pavement wagers, which I’ll discuss later. These include the three-shell game and three-card-monte. Like casino games, you bet against a house advantage. Unlike casino games, you cannot win.

I’ve already described a prevalent, greed-based self-rip called the bait-and-switch scam. This one occurs when you’re offered a deal too good to be true, a camera, for example, at such an irresistible price. You think it might be stolen, but that’s a detail you just don’t want to know. You test and scrutinize the item, you hem and haw, you buy it, and you get self-ripped. Read more on bait-and-switch.

What about tipping policies—are you prepared? Do taxis and waiters expect a hefty twenty percent? Do locals simply round up to the whole number? Are tips considered an insult? Are they included in the bill? Are they included in the bill with a blank total on the credit card slip, encouraging you to not notice and add more (or, to be fair, allowing you to lessen the included tip)? Tipping ignorance may lead you to self-rips. The State Department travel site won’t help you here, but internet research, travel guidebooks, and some great apps will.

Get out and travel! Explore our fascinating world…
Get out and travel! Explore our fascinating world…

Bob Arno and I are travel enthusiasts. We adore the variety of London one day, the next Johannesburg, Mumbai, New York, Florence, Sydney, Cairo, Buenos Aires… all in a year’s work. The last thing we want is to frighten travelers.

We believe that awareness and forewarning put a serious dent in the number of needless thefts that occur. One wallet stolen: it’s a small crime, not devastating, and its likelihood and consequences do not spontaneously occur to people traveling to unfamiliar destinations for business or pleasure. Since the threat never enters their minds, they are not prepared to protect themselves.

Yet, the after-effect is annoying at the least, troublesome and humiliating at worst, with the added potential of identity theft, which begins with stolen information.

Bob and I say awareness is your best weapon. We say do your research, raise your antennas, and go forth: explore and savor the natural and cultural differences that make each country and city unique. Rejoice in your fortune to be able to travel. Bon voyage and travel safe!

For more self-rips, read Cash or Credit Card?.

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

Chapter Two: Research Before You Go

© Copyright 2008-2013 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

Why Pickpocketing Continues

tree stump

How Laws Tie Hands, And Cut Them Off

tree stump

Sharif spat a mouthful of blood as he laid his right arm across a wide tree stump. He had chewed the inside of his cheeks to shreds in the days since he’d been caught picking pockets in the Grand Mosque at Mecca. As an Egyptian man in Saudi Arabia, he was not entitled to extradition for his crime. He was to be punished swiftly and in public.

Meanwhile, in Spain, Kharem dusted himself off after a police beating, gave a fleeting wistful thought to the cash he surrendered, and went back to work.

“I never hear of pickpockets,” said Dina, an Egyptian woman who works as a tour guide with Abercrombie & Kent in Cairo. “I have never had a tourist in my charge complain of theft. Neither have my colleagues. If someone were to try to steal, the people around would beat him black and blue. They would knock him down and kick him, even burn his fingertips. It just does not happen here. Cairo is such a crowded city, we must live like brothers and sisters.”

Contrast Egypt with Italy, where there are just too many thieves for the police to deal with. Without exception, every police officer we interviewed throughout Italy (and much of Europe), threw up his hands and blew a jetstream of air at our first mention of pickpockets.

And while each officer showed a thorough knowledge of the perpetrators and their methods, we found a serious lack of record-keeping. No information is shared among countries, among agencies, even among stations in a single city. In fact, most officers do not even have computers into which to feed the data.

In Venice, the Municipale Police told us they are only interested in Venice, not in Italy or Europe. Because they never see the actual crime, the squad can’t arrest or jail; they “just open the door to the next city” so the problem becomes someone else’s.

Still, what’s the value of numbers, patterns, and percentages? Italy’s laws work against pickpocket police, and this is typical across Europe. Almost every European official we interviewed (with the notable exceptions of those in Naples and St. Petersburg) blamed the preponderance of pickpocketing and bag-snatching on illegal immigrants. But the countries simply cannot get rid of their illegal aliens.

In Italy, the first problem is administrative. When immigrants are caught without papers, they are politely given 15 days to pack up and leave the country. They are released. And that’s the end of it. The immigrants just do not leave. They do not choose to return to the hellholes from which they came.

Secondly, many of the foreigners have no passports or identification. And without documentation, the north African countries from which many of these people come refuse to accept their repatriation. We cannot expect to see a reduction in street crime thanks to law enforcement without the laws to back them. Their hands are tied.

In Egypt, where people live “like brothers and sisters,” Cairenes live side by side in rivalry and harmony; even men stroll arm in arm, holding hands. Across Egypt, a quasi-vigilantism controls low-level crimes. Misdemeanors and serious offenses are dealt with according to criminal code.
Egypt’s judicial system is based on British and Italian models, but modified to suit the country’s Islamic heritage and influenced by its ancient laws. Most of Egypt’s laws are consistent with or at least derived from Islamic law, the sharia.

If Egyptian pickpocket Sharif Ali Ibrahim had committed his crime in Egypt and had been caught by alert citizens, he would have been severely beaten. If he’d been caught by the police, he’d serve a significant prison term. And if he’d been found guilty of stealing from one of Egypt’s precious tourists, his sentence would have been trebled.

But Sharif committed his crime in Saudi Arabia, in fact at Islam’s holiest place. He had picked the pockets of worshippers praying in the Grand Mosque at Mecca. Therefore, following strict Islamic sharia, Sharif Ali Ibrahim’s right hand was chopped off with a sword, in public.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Six: Public Transportation—Talk About Risky…

© Copyright 2008-2013 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

Pickpocket steals from jacket on cafe chair

How a pickpocket steals from a jacket hung on the back of a restaurant chair.
How a pickpocket steals from a jacket hung on the back of a restaurant chair. pickpocket steals from jacket on cafe chair
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?

pickpocket steals from jacket on cafe chair; Cash is stolen from a wallet in a jacket pocket, without removing the wallet.
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.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Seven: Scams—By the Devious Strategist

© Copyright 2008-2012 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

Barcelona’s Ronaldinho pickpocket technique

Al'alla, a retired pickpocket in Tangier
Al'alla, a retired pickpocket in Tangier
Al’alla, a retired pickpocket in Tangier

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.
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.

Adapted from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams, in hardcover and ebook formats. Originally posted on Robbed In Barcelona on 1/30/12.

© Copyright 2008-2012 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

 

“Travel Advisory” eBooks available

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“So, do yourself a favor before you travel: get a copy of Travel Advisory. When you consider the cost and stress and inconvenience of a stolen bag, it could easily be the best few bucks you spend.”

© Copyright 2008-2011 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

Bait and switch—part 4

The bag with the real item is tucked away for another sucker sale
The bag with the real item is tucked away for another sucker sale

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

© Copyright 2008-2011 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.