If you’re even a little interested in the explosion of gypsy beggars across Europe, and particularly in Sweden, you must see this documentary. It’s Bulgarian with English subtitles, in three parts.
Gypsy Beggars in Sweden
“Bulgarian TV host Mirolyuba Benatova interviews bulgarian gypsy beggars in Sweden and asks questions about their income and the criminal aspects of it.”
If you watch the documentary, please tell me in the comments below: Did it change your mind in any way? Did it confirm something you suspected? How was it enlightening?
Suitably spooky site for a psychic school: Arthur Findlay College in Essex, England.
A year ago, psychic swindler Rose Marks was sentenced to more than ten years in federal prison for fleecing clients of her fortune-telling business out of more than $17.8 million. She was 62 years old; she and her family had built a network of psychics, many of whom worked under the professional name Joyce Michael in Ft. Lauderdale and New York City.
One of Rose Marks’s best scams was to “see” the awful (and outrageously convoluted) future of a client, then solicit millions of dollars from the client, bit by bit, in order to perform rituals over the money before returning it. Except, the money was never returned.
At trial, victims testified that Marks “exploited them during vulnerable times in their lives. Victims said the women of the psychic’s family were masterful in their ability to use people’s spiritual or religious beliefs to get them to hand over money and other valuables.”
I always thought psychics had a “gift.”
Turns out, no. They just go to psychic schools. Or seance schools. Or clairvoyant colleges. These institutions have complete curricula of course study in, uh… conning. Courses called Unfoldment into Mediumship, Using Past Life Information in Present Time, Applying Clairvoyant Tools in the Psychic Playground, Trance: How to Sit for its Development, and So You Want to be a Medium are a small sampling from the few psychic schools I surveyed.
Rose Marks is infamous enough to have her own Wikipedia page, and lucky enough to have been trained by her own mother in the Gypsy tradition. She began her psychic career by age nine and later trained her own daughter.
If you don’t have the benefit of maternal training, there are psychic schools. All of them offer comprehensive instruction from beginner to advanced levels.
Psychic Schools
In the class called Stepping into Mediumship at MontClair Metaphysical School in New Jersey, the focus is learning how to “contact someone on the Other Side and to provide proof of their identity, personality and proof of life.”
Proof of life? The “Other Side” means the dead, right? So they’re teaching students how to contact the dead. And they must really teach that—otherwise the school is a sham.
Next, the students are taught how to prove they’ve contacted the correct dead person. Hmmm… mistakes can happen. Kind of like getting your neighbor’s mail in your box. Oops. But it’s the last bit that confuses me most: students are taught how to provide “proof of life.” Of a dead person? Is there life on the “Other Side”? From my perspective then, as an afterlife-nonbeliever, the school teaches how to scam. It is a school of scams, a college of cons, if I comprehend the concept correctly.
Or perhaps I need spiritual help.
Just last month, Psychic Gina was arrested in Fort Collins, Colorado, for bilking $37,000 from a client, with the collusion of her accomplice husband. Psychic Gina Marks is a member of another Marks family’s fortune-telling business; if and how they are related to Rose Marks is unknown.
Who would pay a psychic thousands of dollars for aura-cleansing, curse-lifting, love-finding, or to get through the ordinary difficulties of life? Usually those desperate in the areas of love, loss, health, or career. In the usual progression, the victim visits a psychic storefront for an inexpensive palm reading. Talented fortune-tellers assign homework to their clients, and persuade them to return repeatedly for convoluted rituals that escalate in price. Often, the psychic promises that the funds will be returned when the client’s problems are solved. Countering the failure of promised results, psychics convince clients to return by threatening certain catastrophe, calamity, and misfortune.
It is these advanced fortune-making skills I’d like to read about in the psychic schools’ syllabus: the inveigling, up-selling, cold-reading, deceit, and trickery. Which classes teach those vital skills? What about marketing, costuming, decor, and special effects?
The Psychic School in northern California offers many classes, all by telephone. One is Create Magic and Miracles. Is that the one in which you learn how to make teacups tip over and tables float? Most classes are $200, or you can take the two-year Teachers Program for $4,800. The Psychic School’s site carefully describes each course as self-healing, self-improvement, self-knowledge, and self-awareness. You study to be a psychic in order to read only your own chakra, energy, and dead people, right?
See your money-making abilities skyrocket
However, the Psychic School does point out that “with the development of your clairvoyant abilities, the decisions through which you create your life come with ease, your creativity and money-making abilities skyrocket….” I take that to mean that as a graduated “psychic” (the Teachers Program ends with a “Psychic School Certificate of Graduationg” [sic], there’s no end to the creativity you can use and fees you can charge to scam your clients. Becoming a clairvoyant, you will “create a life filled with insight, creativity, and miracles.” Sounds great!
Let’s have a look at the Berkeley Psychic Institute’s Clairvoyant Training Program, which the institute also refers to as “psychic kindergarten.” It must be child’s play! But no. It’s a two-year, four-phase program of intensive learning and “hands on training from high caliber gifted psychics,” and concludes with “Uncovering your deepest challenges, moving through the fire and slaying the dragons.”
Berkeley Psychic Institute operates the DejaVu Psychic Hotline, where graduates can get instant employment doing telephone and email readings. Email readings? Yes, for $25, one can order an “Email Trance Medium Channeled Healing.”
“We do not consider ourselves as fortune tellers. We are fortune creators,” says the DejaVu Psychic Hotline website. Whose fortunes are being created?
Arthur Findlay College, pictured above and about an hour north of London, calls itself “The Worlds Foremost College for the Advancement of Spiritualism and Psychic Sciences.” Not only can one study mediumship, but also trance mediumship, in which “you will be connected to spirit working with spirit and supported by spirit.” Sounds complicated. And that is the clearest line in the entire course description. Is that an example of the obfuscation taught in the institute? Vital skill for a clairvoyant.
Perhaps the most important course for a psychic medium is Mediumship – Polish Your Performance. Since mediumship is learned—not an innate gift—one must study and practice to become convincing when channeling a spirit from the Other Side. This is “essential for customers not only to return but recommend you to others,” the Arthur Findlay College site says. I’m guessing there’s some overlap with trance mediumship. Arthur Findlay College is international and holds week-long sessions in a multitude of languages including Japanese, Swedish, Italian, Norwegian, German, French, and Finnish. It even markets a course especially for senior citizens.
What do Psychic Schools cost?
What does it cost to become a clairvoyant? A basic week-long course at Arthur Findlay College, say Mediumship & Spiritual Development, costs £570 (about $845) with room and board, double occupancy. Add £9 per person if you want a room with your own bathroom. With more than 80 courses available, a wannabe-psychic can spend a pretty penny.
But everyone knows that a solid education leads to a solid career. Just a few years ago, Psychic Michelle Morgan, of Tarzana, California, raked in almost a million from a single client, a young man whom she determined was suffering from a love curse. Psychic Michelle was patient; she kept her 25-year-old mark dependent on her rituals for two years, urging him to borrow more and more money to fund his psychic sessions. The skills she honed allowed her to entrap and ensnare her victims and exploit them for much more than they were worth. Like all those in her field, silver-tongued Psychic Michelle’s talent was unctuous smooth-talk, glib persuasion, and creative conning. Presumably, the 25-year-old million-dollar-client wasn’t Psychic Michelle’s only client.
So what does a clairvoyant college curriculum really teach? How does an institute prepare a student medium for a career in clairvoyance? Does it really teach curse-lifting, money-purifying, and soul-swapping? Are the students taught how to scam and con their clients? Or are the students themselves scammed by the schools?
I recently wrote about beggars on the streets of Stockholm. I observed that an abundance of beggars are now stationed in the streets, and that they are mostly from Romania. I argued that these beggars are organized, and possibly trafficked, that a large portion of collected money goes to “bosses,” and that Swedes are naive and therefore an easy market for the begging enterprise, which is in large part social engineering. The article became quite controversial, especially in Sweden.
Roma beggars in Stockholm take a breakA street in Constanta, RomaniaA street in Constanta, RomaniaA street in Constanta, RomaniaGypsy family in RomaniaA gypsy woman, mother of five children, who collects plastic bottles for a living.A little girl’s rough living.A gypsy woman, mother of five children, who collects plastic bottles for a living.Constanta, Romania skyline
Now, after making a trip to Romania, I have some follow-up information. (But you have to read through my rant before you get it.)
Romanian beggars in Sweden
Swedes are reluctant to believe that their cities and towns have been besieged by professional beggars. Despite the thousands of Romanian beggars in evidence, Swedes stubbornly insist that these are simply individual unfortunate humans who can survive by no other means. For some reason, Swedes excuse them from working for a living. Despite the fact that the Romanian beggars (individually!) all use the exact same posture, the same dress mode, the same plastic bundles of personal effects, the same blanket-wrap and paper cup and laminated photo—even the exact same laminated photo of the very same children. Despite the fact that prime “locations” seem to be continuously occupied, with methodical rotations of personnel so that the position is never vacant, never vulnerable to being usurped by a competitor. Despite the fact that these locations follow a scheme favoring the doors of particular grocery and liquor stores and subway entrances, all over Stockholm and all over Sweden.
Really. Are these Romanian beggars—all the several thousands of them—each sole and separate individuals, each uneducated, each unable to work, each self-organized?
Is Sweden a country of ostriches with their heads buried in the sand? Not quite. Sweden holds a native population intensely dependent on social proof. Everyone is terrified of committing inappropriate behavior, voicing an unpopular belief, not conforming to the group mentality. Everyone’s afraid of appearing to lack compassion, sympathy, charity, and brotherly love. Everyone’s afraid of appearing racist.
For an excellent example of this attitude, take a look at an August 28, 2014 article in Metro, the free paper distributed on Swedish trains. “No, the beggars are not controlled by criminal gangs,” is a translation of the Swedish headline. Its main source of intelligence is a Swedish “homelessness coordinator.” I don’t know, but I would suspect that Romanians who occupy Sweden for the purpose of begging do not go to the state for housing. That’s why they have bosses! To organize them, find them places to sleep. Also note that they carry their possessions around with them in sacks, like old-fashioned hobos.
Other sources in the article tiptoe through their interviews, cautiously hedging with evasive statements like this police officer’s: “‘It is very difficult to say that begging is organized,’ says Stockholm Police Peter Enell.” The article also makes short shrift of the statements by “a police officer with roots in Romania.” To me, the Metro article is laughable. Have a look. Or don’t waste your time.
To find out more about Romanian beggars, Bob Arno and I went investigating in Romania.
We met with a highly experienced police officer and another official in the city of Constanta, neither of whom would like to be named. Both told us that Romanians who beg outside of Romania are definitely organized. (I did not ask about beggars inside Romania.)
I asked if poor villagers sought out begging gang-leaders for assistance, or if villagers were recruited by the gangsters. They are recruited, I was assured. They are desperately poor, and they are Roma. On their own, they could not afford foreign travel. They require the assistance of leaders (bosses, aka gangsters) who organize their transportation. Of course, these bosses must be repaid.
The official pointed out a number of Roma men drinking on the sidewalks. They are robbers, he said.
The police officer said that people are still maimed for the purpose of begging. I did not get clarification, but I take this to mean that it is children who are maimed. The officer described a horrendous practice, in which adults push a child into slow-moving traffic. When the child is hit and injured, the adults demand cash on the spot from the driver in order to not involve the police.
It’s hard to believe that this barbaric savagery really happens. Yet, the officer told us that this exact atrocity had occurred only two days before our meeting, right in the center of town, in front of Tomis Mall (near where we found our pickpockets the next day). I can’t get the nightmarish image out of my head.
I must presume that the adults were not the parents of the child victim. Who is the child, then? Stolen? Purchased? Rented? I also presume that the child, with its unpredictable injuries, is intended to become a compelling beggar who will attract sympathy and more cash with its twisted limbs and scarred skin.
This anachronism is difficult to grasp in modern, civilized society. It’s impossible to imagine the desperation and cold-bloodedness that leads to such an industry.
(It brings to mind the 1989 novel Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn, in which a circus family man concocts chemical cocktails for his pregnant wife, thereby creating his own deformed children for his own lucrative freak show. However, those children are loved. Great book!)
Roma in Romania
Bob and I spoke with a gypsy family that happened to walk past us in Constanta, Romania. Our translator begged us not to, insisting that it would bring trouble and they’d demand money. He said they wouldn’t speak much Romanian and he didn’t speak any Romany. Bob persisted, and the family sat down in a nearby park, amenable and unperturbed.
They were clearly penniless. The mother’s clothes were black with muck and she carried a grubby blanket. The children, eight and eleven years old, were bright and alert. They answered Bob’s questions with the same trepidation any shy children would, glancing at their mother, who smiled back and nodded. The children attended school. The mother had not.
I was enchanted by the little girl, whose scarred and dirty face was beaming one moment, serious the next. Her radiant smile baring two chipped front teeth hinted of a tough life. Her rubber sandals were cracked, broken, and dirty. Her feet were caked with grime, her toenails chipped and encrusted. She wants to be a doctor.
The mother has five children: 3, 8, 11, 15, and 20. They live in a house where they pay a small rent. The children’s father is very ill, she told us. He was hit in the head recently. But she doesn’t drink or smoke, she emphasized, as if to counter an unsaid accusation. Also, her brother has been arrested and is in jail for two years. She didn’t elaborate, but added that she’s not afraid of police. She’s sad that she doesn’t have her own house—that’s her dream. To support her family, she collects plastic bottles.
“You ask hard questions,” our translator said, “very personal.”
Now Bob beat around a bush. Without asking directly, he tried to find out if the family had been approached by human traffickers or gangsters offering them a better life. He spoke directly to the children.
Our translator was not familiar with our peculiar area of interest and had no idea what we were getting at—which is just the way we wanted it. No interfering, no answering on behalf of the family or spinning their replies. It was interesting to observe his change in attitude. He softened toward the children, he was charmed by them, and impressed by the mother’s candid and sincere statements.
When Bob invited the mother to ask him questions, she had none. She simply smiled and said “I’m glad that you asked us all these questions and pleased that you are interested in our life.”
The family did not ask us for money, though we gave them some at the end. The children handled the bills reverently, then handed them to their mother. The woman was surprised and grateful.
Criminal Romanian begging rings
I have not seen any children (Roma or otherwise) begging in Sweden. I’m sure it wouldn’t be tolerated. However, Romanian children beggars and pickpockets are plentiful in England, Italy, Spain, France, and probably additional European countries, but those I have listed I have personal experience with.
Here’s a 2-minute BBC clip on Romanian child-beggars, human trafficking, begging-ring bosses, and new riches in poor Romanian villages.
Just a few years ago, one never saw beggars in Stockholm. Today, one never sees Swedish beggars, but beggars from Romania seem to be on every corner, at the door of every shop, and at every subway station entrance. It’s an orchestrated invasion; just like the organized Gypsy begging that has been investigated and documented in the U.K. However, in Stockholm, I haven’t (yet?) seen child beggars. Not even babes in arms. I suspect the kingpins are smart enough to realize that Sweden wouldn’t stand for that.
The Swedish government periodically debates the possibility of banning begging, but then, what would happen to the few homeless and drug-addicted Swedes who beg, and the few alcoholics out on the street? Where would they get cash?
Well then, let’s ban begging by foreigners! Good idea, but unlikely to happen any time soon, I think. Everything in Sweden happens by committee, and happens slooooowly.
Tools of the trade: “family” photos and a paper cup.A Swedish citizen donates to a Romanian beggar in StockholmThis couple just gave 100 crowns, about US$15, to a beggar-woman.A beggar in the Stockholm subway.
When border control within the European Union went soft, it didn’t take syndicate leaders long to take advantage of the new freedom of movement. Transnational criminal activities increased, particularly human trafficking.
For now, EU citizens are allowed to come to Sweden and stay without permission for up to three months. The Gypsy bosses know the rules. They transport the poor Romanian villagers, house them, feed them, and ferry them to their assigned begging spots. They come along and empty the cash-cups periodically.
Like the employees of a global theme park, all the Romanian beggars in Stockholm seem to be clones, all carbon copies of a model with a signature style. They all sit, they’re all wrapped in a blanket, they all hold a paper cup, and they all show photos of children. They all have a number of plastic bags near them, stuffed with things. They all block the flow of traffic.
Sweden is perfect…
Sweden is an excellent venue for this racket. Its citizens are wealthy, compassionate, and to some extent naive. The government is hamstrung and afraid to act. Tourists are rarely the budget type. I see people contributing to the cups (to the bosses’ riches); I’ve never seen meanness or complaint toward the beggars, not even hey-you’re-blocking-the-way.
The issue, the poor-Romanian-beggar, abused-victim-or-system-abuser conundrum, fraught with racial implications, is a bush to be beat around. In Sweden, there’s a ubiquitous fear of “what others think.” Everyone’s afraid to appear incorrect.
We spoke to a couple just after we saw them hand over a hundred crowns (about US$15) with a kind word and pat on the beggar’s arm. They give often, they said, whenever they can. They know these people are poor and need the money to feed their children. The couple buys into the scam hook, line, and sinker. Oh, I believe the beggars are poor and, since they don’t work, need help to support their families. But even the Romanian ambassador to Sweden thinks begging should be outlawed (and acknowledges that the beggars are her countrymen).
The beggars’ bosses* keep track of time. When three months are up, the gang is packed up and moved on for another stint elsewhere. Meanwhile, those at the top of the organized hierarachy build palatial houses back in their dumpy Romanian villages, and poor Romanian parents who “rented out” their children to begging and pickpocketing rings likewise see relative wealth.
Magician Charlie Caper performed well in spite of the beggar who hobbled onto the stage and disrupted his show.After the beggar-woman gains attention on stage, she heads out into the audience with her cup.After taking undue applause with the magician, the beggar proffers her cup and photo.The beggar smiled, pointed, gestured, and took the magician’s applause.The beggars are mostly women and usually have a number of stuffed plastic bags beside them.A beggar in StockholmA beggar in StockholmRomania’s Command Central in Stockholm? There’s always a cluster on the stairs at Sergel’s Plattan.
Bob and I strolled through Kungsträdgården, a central park area in Stockholm, while a street performers’ festival was in full swing. Magician Charlie Caper, surrounded by a good crowd, was mid-routine when one of these Gypsy beggars actually waddled on stage and joined him.
Atypical for her type and oddly gregarious, she seemed to thrive on the magician’s reflected attention. The brazen beggar gestured, she pointed, she ta-da’ed. And when the crowd applauded for the magician, she soaked it up all-smiles and headed into the audience with her cup and photo, as if she were collecting for her talented son. The audacity!
Is it good to give?
Let’s say for a moment that the gypsy beggars in Stockholm get to keep all the cash they collect. I know—but just for arguments’ sake. Then subtract what they must pay for transport from Romania and in three months, to some unknown point (by crowded bus?). And subtract what they pay for food, lodging, and local transportation (which is not cheap in Sweden). They must be gathering a pretty penny, to make their long days on the cold pavement (Sweden, winter…) worthwhile. Citizens and tourists fill the beggars’ cups and the Gypsies (often seen talking on their mobile phones) call their friends and relatives back home and urge them to hop on the next bus to Stockholm, the deal’s great.
Or let’s say it’s not like that at all. The beggars are basically slave labor, trafficked humans, forced to sit on the pavement all day, forced to follow company protocol behaving just so. Strict overseers collect the beggars’ takings periodically and they are given a small wage. Most of the money donated by good samaritans goes into the pockets of the ringleader who—it’s well-established by now—builds palatial mansions (relatively speaking) in Romanian villages otherwise full of wood shacks.* The whole enterprise is a social engineering stunt—one huge scam exploiting public empathy and generous social services.
Either way, depositing funds into the cup-accounts of bundled beggars on the street is not a smart way to help. It rewards the begging enterprise, feeds the criminal organization, and ensures the continuation of the practice. Donors are kindhearted patsies.
Of course Stockholm isn’t the only city under siege. In fact, all of Sweden, even small towns in the frigid north, has been invaded by organized Romanian beggars. Denmark made headlines when Trine Bramsen, justice police spokeswoman for its governing Social Democrat party, said “We don’t want to make Denmark a hotel with a reputation across Europe for free food and board.” She wants them to “choose another country, for example Sweden, where they know they have better possibilities.” Looks like that’s working.
Some parts of the Austria, for example Tyrol and Salzburg, tried to ban begging altogether. But the Constitutional Court overturned outright bans, ruling that begging is a human right.
The European Union is desperate for a solution but the problem is huge—far bigger than organized begging, even though these rings fall within the realm of human trafficking. “The problem of human trafficking in the European Union” is good read, freshly presented by the European Parliamentary Research Service.
A tool to combat trafficking, is knowledge of its causes and vulnerabilities of victims. This Romanian study of trafficking in persons for forced begging provides such a picture. It highlights the vulnerabilities of potential victims, the characteristics of traffickers and outlines recommendations on combating both these aspects. This study will assist in facilitating ongoing campaigns and cooperation to fight against this heinous crime, to fight for the protection, assistance to, and dignity of the victims and most importantly, to prevent trafficking.
Well-meant donations to beggars enrich the criminal syndicate leaders and further enslave the individuals forced into begging. Giving to beggars is misplaced kindness. The gift does not remain in the hand that receives it.
*Edited 7/29/14 to add support and sources:
“The leaders of a child-trafficking operation that put hundreds of beggars on the streets of Britain were targeted in a series of raids today in a remote Romanian town where opulent mansions have sprung up since the country joined the European Union. … at least 17 people were arrested after the raids on 33 homes in Tandarei [Romania] by a small army of organised crime investigators, assisted by 26 Metropolitan Police officers and two observers from Interpol. … Firearms, jewellery, luxury cars and large sums of money were found at the homes of suspects, according to local media, which said that 320 Romanian officers were involved in the operation. Tandarei, with its population of 12,000 people, 150km east of Bucharest, has undergone a seemingly miraculous economic boom in the past few years.” Police in Romania arrest leaders of child-trafficking operation in UK, The Times, April 8, 2010
If you don’t have a subscription to The Times and do not want to pay £1, the text is also here. Underline above is mine.
Edit: Finally, 10/4/14, Sweden admits out loud that the beggars are organized and pay big bucks to bosses.Beggars are Forced to Pay, in Dagens Nyheter, Swedens biggest daily paper. Here’s a Google-translation of the page.
Edit: It is mid-December, mostly dark and freezing out, and I see just as many beggars as in the summer. Perhaps more are in the subways and inside the entries of grocery stores than out in the streets, but they’re in full force. Well-bundled, at least.
Edit: Over six days walking all over London in August 2015, I saw exactly two beggars. Police tell me they are removed from the streets immediately and given food and shelter.
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 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.”
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.”
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.
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.
Pickpockets running rife in the Louvre—nothing new there. Pickpockets acting aggressively: in our 20 years of active street crime research, we’ve been flipped off, hit, spit upon, and mooned.
I hate to say this because it’s bound to be taken wrong, but the flipping off, hitting, spitting, and mooning has all been committed by Roma whom we were following and/or filming as they pickpocketed or attempted to do so. Though they are certainly not the only pickpockets in Paris or in Europe, they’re a particularly visible group. Other nationals have learned to better blend into their host cities.
The Louvre pickpockets’ M.O. is already familiar to me. They employ minors—their own or other children from the clan. The children are not in school. (The parents allow them to attend until they can read and write; then they’re yanked out so they aren’t sucked into the Gadjo (non-gypsy) ways.) The children may get caught, but must be released to their parents because they are underage. The parents yell at these children, not because they were pickpocketing—but because they were caught. The adults, when arrested, are usually held only a day or two, if at all, and then go right back to work—usually back to their favorite territories.
Roma immigrants from Romania are fleeing real persecution, abominable conditions, and pauper’s wages. They arrive in France and other European countries claiming to seek a better life for themselves and better opportunities for their children. Their vocal representatives beg for integration assistance and national governments develop programs with that intention. Yet the Roma remain outsiders. By choice, it seems.
Many (or most) are illiterate, which seriously compromises their job options. What else are they to do?
One document from a current investigation against three Romanian women illuminates the trend [crime spike]. “For at least a year, observations in Duisburg (but also nationally) show that Romanian groups (apparently family clans) are committing organized crimes on an alarming scale,” it reads. Most of the crimes involve pickpocketing or shoplifting, but there have also been cases of fraud whereby perpetrators pretend to be deaf or disabled while panhandling, then snatch wallets and mobile phones from their distracted victims. Clan leaders send out mainly young women on a “regional” basis for these activities. Poverty and Crime: Conditions Little Better for Roma Immigrants in Germany, Spiegel Online International, 10/19/12.
A crowd at the Louvre jostle to see the Mona Lisa, ignoring the prominent pickpocket warning.
The police Bob Arno and I communicate with constantly express frustration over the Roma crime wave, which is not new, but is getting worse. Criminal Roma are regularly given €300 and escorted to the border. After their paid vacations in Romania, they return to pick up where they left off.
It is difficult or impossible to discuss this issue, let alone solve it, without being politically incorrect. Perpetrators, good Roma citizens, and the press all blame a prejudiced stereotypical image. The word gypsy is all but outlawed. My 250 page book on pickpockets and street crime does not use the word once (well, once—but in a string of general references to many cultures).
Yet, despite all the denials and euphemisms, Bob and I have observed and interviewed Roma—yes, Gypsy—pickpockets all across Europe. Police we meet and police we know well struggle to dial back crime levels perpetrated by their communities. Now, Roma begging has gotten out of hand.
There is evidence that much of the begging is organised and controlled by men. The women are expected to bring in at least 50 euros a day. Some, like outside the Gare Du Nord, operate in groups of up to 15. The police believed that invalids and children, who are used to gain sympathy, are shared out between the groups. The Roma Repatriation, BBC News, 8/19/10
Countries experiencing Roma criminal gang activity are calling for the European Union to find a solution better than evictions, better than abuse, better than handouts, better than relegating the Roma to the barren fringes where they have little chance to integrate into society. But I wonder: do the Roma want to integrate into society?
A couple of scumbags have been casing neighborhoods in Las Vegas, preying on elders. They chat up residents, pretending to be a former resident or a relative of a neighbor. They ask questions and gather information. When they’ve learned enough about someone elderly on the street, they approach the senior armed with facts and trivia—enough to garner the senior’s confidence. In every case, the bottom line is that they need money. The money’s not for them, of course; it’s for one of the neighbors, who is in a costly (fictitious) emergency situation, something medical, or maybe legal. The two solicitors are merely good samaritans.
Rick Shawn, who has more than 1,000 identities.
Classic social engineering. This pair of con artists has bilked 19 known victims in Las Vegas, all over age 73, out of tens of thousands of dollars. It’s likely that they’re connected to similar incidents in Arizona and California; it’s probable that many other victims exist, unaware they’ve been scammed, or embarrassed to come forward.
It sounds like a couple on a crime spree, but it’s much more than that. From our intensive workshop with NABI, we know that this is organized crime. Assistant district attorney Scott Mitchell called them gypsies. Most likely, they are members of one of the families called Travelers. These families move from town to town as they pull their scams, often on the elderly. They have a large repertoire, including sweetheart swindles, pigeon drops, fake lotto schemes, and home repair. Many of these are combined with plain old burglary.
The Travelers are organized crime families. So organized, that when they find a particularly gullible victim, they pass his info to the next family members scheduled to roll through that town. Then, even if the victim realizes that the roof repair or driveway resurfacing job was shoddy, he won’t recognize the brother or cousin who offers to paint the house with leftover paint from a job down the street, or the sister collecting funds for the sick man a few houses down.
'My dog is accused of eating neighbours chicken Plyz help with bail.' Don't be tempted.
These fraudsters go to extremes in order to impersonate a good samaritan. Through social engineering, they manipulate their victims with a realistic story, bamboozle them with bullshit, dupe them, and exploit them. It always ends one way: the victims’ money in the Travelers’ hands. The two pictured above go so far as to drive their victims to their banks or ATMs.
These two have been arrested and are being held, as of this moment, at Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas. Travelers are known to have lawyers on retainer and bail money at the ready. Although the two are considered flight risks, they may bail out on the condition that they wear GPS ankle devices.
Actually, that’s not likely. I just spoke with Lieutenant Bob Sebby, Las Vegas Metro, who said that 15 additional victims have been confirmed. Metro is asking other victims to come forward.
In which Bob Arno and his fancy accessory spy on the Russians.
A man plays accordion on a Russian bridge
St. Petersburg, Russia— I was ensconced in my stake-out spot on the Canal Griboyedova across from the Gostiny Dvor Metro station; Bob was elsewhere. My position was excellent: close to the action, but the canal between my spot and the crime scene prevented my view from being blocked by passing people. It also had a massive, standing concrete slab, some sort of abandoned roadworks part, which I could duck behind when necessary. Leaded exhaust already lined my nasal passages, and fresh pee fumes rose from the slab. The location wasn’t perfect. I did enjoy the faint strains of accordion from a man squeezing one on the canal bridge half a block away.
Bambi's canal-side hide-out, beside a pee-stained concrete slab.
After filming alone for an hour or so, Bob passed behind me as if he didn’t know me and suggested I cross Nevsky Prospekt because the Mongolian pickpocket gang was at work in the crosswalk, out of my field of view. I did so, but felt exposed and nervous. I half hid behind a billboard and tried to film them, but the angle wasn’t good. A constant stream of pedestrians and traffic blocked my view of the corner. I was also afraid that, since they knew me, one of the gangsters would approach me from behind, or while I was looking through the camera’s view finder. After a while Bob came to get me again.
Bob speaks to the ice cream seller, who has contraband to pass off.
He brought me over to an ice cream cart on the corner in front of the Kazansky Cathedral. The proprietor, Katarina Pavlova, spoke French to Bob. She said she had noticed that he was observing the pickpockets, and that she had something to show him. She looked left and right before explaining that one of the thieves had walked past her stand and tossed something into her trash. Digging through the garbage, she retrieved a thick stack of credit cards, ID, and other wallet contents belonging to a 55-year-old French woman.
The wallet contents had been tossed into the ice cream seller's trash can.
The ice cream seller said she felt it was safe enough to tell us only because this was her last day of work; she was retiring from the ice cream business and planned to stay out of the city. She pressed the plundered heap into Bob’s hand with a forced crooked smile. He should take it. For some reason, she felt it was right.
She retrieved the stolen credit cards from her trash can after seeing the thieves throw them in.
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So. Pickpockets were dumping ID and credit cards. This seemed to corroborate what other thieves and the police had told us: that the guys working the streets do not exploit credit cards. But what were we to do with the cards? Of course, we immediately thought, we’d try to return them to the victim. After all, they included a telephone number and address. But just as quickly, with a chill, we asked ourselves if this was a set-up. Can you imagine the shakedown? We’re accused of being pickpockets, searched, and found with a French woman’s documents. What would that cost in baksheesh? I imagined handcuffs; then beatings and prison and huge ransoms.
Here you can see the peeish concrete slab. Bambi stands against the canal rail, in her black camouflage.
Bob took the cards.
I objected. So we compromised. We gave the cards back to the ice cream seller, then videotaped her handing them over to Bob and explaining how she had obtained them. Might not stand up in court, but it eased my mind. Eventually, we did try to phone the woman in France, but the number was no longer good. We put them into the mail and never heard of them again.
A little Russian gypsy girl plays in the street
We wandered a couple blocks down, halfway between Nevsky Prospekt and the Church on the Spilled Blood, toward an internet cafe. We’d been inside it many times, and it was always empty except for the sour boy who took our coins. Wandering along, we paused in the oppressive heat to watch a tiny barefooted girl squatting in the street, spinning an old muffler.
She begs and gets a bottle of water
With fine-tuned radar, she leapt to her feet as a man and woman strolled into view and ran to them as fast as her heavy velvet dress allowed. Her big brown eyes netted a bottle of water, which she appeared to take with delight. She went back to her muffler, only to rise again for the next couple, who tried to ignore her.
She latches onto the leg of a passerby
The tenacious little beggar latched onto the man’s leg and wouldn’t let go. When she fell to her knees, the man literally dragged her along the pavement.
The girl is given a dollar
One American dollar freed him. The girl admired her take, carefully folded the bill, and stuffed it into a small pouch that hung from her neck. We watched her until she ran to her mother, who sat on the ground with an infant a block away, leaning against the canal rail.
The little beggar girl tucks money into her pouchShe runs back to, probably, her mother and baby sibling
Late that night, we spoke with a group of Belgian tourists who said that they had been robbed the day before while coming out of the Metro station on Nevsky Prospekt. Three women were hit. One had her purse slashed with a blade and all contents were removed. Her arm had been across her purse. The cut was just under her forearm. The thief had planted his elbow in the woman’s stomach. The other woman had her fannypack opened. The pickpocket handed her passport back to her, indicating that it had been on the ground. I didn’t get the story of the third woman.
Andrey Umansky, a front desk manager at the Grand Hotel Europe, used to work at Baltic Tours, a tour bus operator. Every spring, before tourist season began, they’d pay the police, he said. The deal was that they’d use special signs affixed to buses and carried on sticks, which were meant to tell thieves to stay away from this group. And the police, he explained, made deals with the thieves in order to protect the groups that paid for protection.
There’s lots more.
Another day…
See Russian Rip-off, a five-part post with video.
In a quick visit to Rome last month, Bob and I found it pretty quiet on the streets, theft-wise. Granted, we only spent a few hours on the prowl, but given our 15 years experience thiefhunting in Rome, we know where to look. We usually find an eclectic mix of Italian, Roma, North African, and East European thieves, plus many we don’t speak to, many who won’t tell, and many who lie.
On this visit, we spent at least half an hour shadowing a mixed-gender threesome halfheartedly preying. As they trudged along the tourist trail, one of their members entered each souvenir shop along the way and stood among the customers. Another spent time among the postcard stands. They were an extraordinarily scruffy group, whose appearance certainly limits their access and proximity to targets. After a lethargic effort, they disbanded at a bus stop. We engaged two of them as they scattered, and learned that they were Polish.
Other than this group, we saw very few “suspects” in the Metro, on Bus 64, hanging around at the usual favorite bus stops, or on the streets. Termini, the main train station, was littered with dodgy characters, as usual, but we didn’t linger, preferring to survey the scene outside the station.
Are Italians finally fed up enough to do something about crime? At least crime committed by immigrants, it seems. A couple of telling surveys reported in The Guardian hint to a new, anti-immigrant climate in Italy, and especially anti-Gypsy.
81% of Italian respondents said they found all Gypsies, Romanian or not, “barely likeable or not likeable at all”, a greater number than the 64% who said they felt the same way about non-Gypsy Romanians.
and
Romanians were among the 268 immigrants rounded up in a nationwide police crackdown on prostitution and drug dealing this week, after new prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s likening of foreign criminals to “an army of evil”.
Word has been out on the street for some time. “Jaga” and Ana, a Romanian pickpocket couple we interviewed at length in Rome in 2003, told us they were planning to move to Spain, where it is easier to live and to conduct their business. They are not the only thieves to express this sentiment, which helps explain why Spain has such a preponderance of pickpockets.
Pisa, too, was empty of the sticky-fingered women and children we usually find at the train station, bus station, and all around the Piazza del Duomo. Locals there said they had noticed the pickpockets’ disappearance about a month ago.
But just when we thought Italy might be cracking down on crime, we heard last month’s terrible story of the American couple served drugged cappuccino in a Rome train station, where they were then robbed. Upon awaking, the man stumbled onto the tracks and was killed by a train. The article continues:
Gangs using narcotic spray to carry out train robberies are also on the rise in Italy, police said. The gangs board sleeper trains and drug passengers in couchettes before hopping off at stations with valuables.
I tend to think the crime lull we sensed in our short survey of Rome’s previous hot spots was actually an anomaly. Or the balloon has been squeezed and the thieves are just elsewhere. I hope that we soon find another opportunity to re-investigate Rome.
Sadly, though, porcini season will be over by our next visit. There is nothing like porcini pizza, especially in Pisa.
ROME POLICE OFFICER CELINI remembered us from previous visits and greeted us warmly. Without asking, he assembled an incident report with carbon paper, in triplicate. I filled out most of the report for Sugohara, and he wrote in his name and address. He had only lost about $100 worth of cash and two credit cards.
We offered to show our video of the crime. Celini first fetched Police Chief Giuseppe D’Emilio. Bob positioned the four-inch monitor of our digital camera and pressed play. The two policemen and Mr. Sugohara put their heads together and peered at the screen as the girl-thieves splashed their faces in the fountain.
“Si,” Chief D’Emilio said tiredly. “We know them. They’re sisters. Maritza and Ravenna.” He and Celini straightened up and turned away from the video. Sugohara still watched with intense interest.
“They have both participated in pickpocketing since before they were born. Their pregnant mother worked the buses. Then, as infants, they were carried in a sling by their mother as she worked these same streets. And when their mother wasn’t using them, one of their aunts would.”
Using children?
Sugohara’s face was close to the screen. He watched intently as the sisters caught up with him so purposefully, arranging their sheet of newspaper and positioning themselves on either side of him. He watched himself leap and skitter backwards.
“The big one, Maritza, she has her own child now,” the police chief continued. “She usually carries her baby all day. A relative must be using the child today.”
Using the child?
Sugohara turned to us, his brow knitted. “Play again,” he demanded.
Bob rewound and Sugohara leaned in. The source of his frustration became apparent. The video showed the moment of contact, but from a distance. Still, that must have been when the wallet was stolen. Then the film showed Sugohara bolting backwards and the girls hurrying away ahead of him and turning the corner. After that, the next full minute was a swinging sidewalk and Bob’s right shoe. Sugohara had hoped to see what the sisters had done with his wallet. But as they hastened along Via Alessandrina, as Bob rushed to catch up with them, as they stowed or stashed or emptied and threw the wallet, the camera filmed only a sea-sickening flow of auto-focused sidewalk. Whatever the girls had done with the wallet was done off the record.
Sugohara watched the useless picture, depressed.
Chief D’Emilio went on. “The only time these kids aren’t stealing is between the ages of seven and eleven, when their parents sometimes let them go to school. Just enough school to learn to read and write, and that’s all.
“I’ve seen them work as young as two years old,” the chief said with eternal amazement. “The father carries the child and gets into a crowd. He leans close to a man. The baby is trained to steal from a man’s inside jacket pocket!” He threw up his hands and exhaled with exasperation. “No wonder we can’t fight this. We have an average of 50 pickpocket reports filed every summer day at this station alone!”
[Note: These photos are not from the book. Neither are they of Maritza and Ravenna. Notice that the girl carries a baby in a sling, as well as a newspaper, which she holds over the pocket or purse she is trying to steal from. Begging is just an excuse to approach marks.]
