Madrid – Thiefhunters in Paradise

Fully warned and aware; pickpocketed anyway

My old friend Avis perused my blog just before her recent trip to Spain. Then she wrote me, doubly concerned. She and her 25ish son were heading to Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, and day trips from those places. She was mostly worried for Zac, who didn’t take the threat seriously. She planned to use a small backpack for herself.

Immediately, I replied:

Briefly, I don’t recommend a backpack unless you plan to carry it on your chest. It’s totally out of your control back there. Try to find a bag with a short strap that fits close to your armpit. More later…

The next day, when I had more time, I provided more thorough advice to my friend:

Great trip you’ve got planned but, yeah, you have to be careful. Zac should not carry a wallet in his back pocket. Tell him that the easiest victims are the ones who say “it won’t happen to me.”

Strip your wallets of anything not necessary. It’s best to carry your passport (when you must carry it) and big cash in a pouch under your clothes. It can be one that hangs around your neck under your shirt, or our favorite, one that hangs inside your pants and has a loop that your belt goes through. These come in several sizes and different materials. Pickpocket proof!

Use a credit card for most purchases so you don’t need to carry a lot of euros. Make photocopies of both sides of all the cards in your wallet, and your passport first page, and keep the copies in your largest luggage. If you can, email the copies to yourself. That way you can get them from any computer any time.

Watch your bags at all times. In the airport, getting out of the taxi in front of your hotel, checking into the hotel, renting a car, etc. Don’t put your bag on the floor or back of your chair in a cafe. If your (or Zac’s) jacket is hanging on the back of a chair in a restaurant, make sure the pockets are empty. Don’t let yourself get distracted by someone asking an innocent question. I know I’m making it sound scary but really, if you pay attention, nothing will happen. If you look away, something might disappear.

Be especially careful on public transportation, getting on and off buses and trains, and going down the metro stairs. If your stuff is in front of you or tucked under your arm, you’ll be okay.

Search barcelona on my blog and read those stories for examples of the creative ruses that trick people into losing their stuff. The pigeon poop ploy, the swipe off tables, fake football, pseudo-cops, and endless good samaritan tricks. Sorry, but it’s true.

A new website just started called RobbedInBarcelona On twitter they’re @RiBCN, and they have a fb page “I know someone who got robbed in Barcelona.” They’re trying to shame the city into doing something. Just read the quotes they translated.

Still, bcn is one of my favorite cities in the world. The food, the mood, the architecture, the galleries…

Pickpocketed anyway.

Pretty good advice, I thought. But not good enough. Avis reported back after her trip:

There’s no other way to say this or to soften the blow, my shame… I had my wallet with my 2 credit cards and debit card and drivers license and 150 in Euros and ?? US money stolen on the metro after landing at the Madrid airport on my first day! The rest of the trip was great. Honestly I can’t figure out how or when the theft occurred, those guys are good, and yes I had a terrific traveling money thing to stick in my pants, but I was going to do it all when I got to the hotel, I did remain vigilant and yet I was got. Zac sez I manifested it and maybe I did.

Pickpocketed anyway. — One way to avoid pickpockets!

Sounds like the boy’s gloating. Schadenfreude, anyone? Impressed with the slickness of her thieves, Avis related just how diligent she’d been:

I was careful to bury my wallet in the bottom of my zipped bag. On top of it was a book, glass case, papers and my passport, which was in the “travel wallet”Â on the very bottom. The bag was my everyday purse: a woman’s purse-type backpack that I could wear with the straps on my back (in other words nice fabric and small; not a school or travelers’ backpack). It has zippers and a pocket in the front which were untouched.Â I did not have it on my back EVER, rather on one shoulder so that I could hold it with one arm,Â or in front of my body. My best guess is that the theft occurred on the escalator when it must have swung behind me and when I obviously couldn’t see behind me and movement was occurring. The zipper was only open about 5 inches (amazing!)

I told Avis that pickpockets do try to close the zippers they’ve opened, if they have time. Gives them a few more seconds to get away if the victim should happen to glance at her bag. I’m sorry that I didn’t warn my friend to prepare herself immediately, even before stepping off her plane. After a long overnight flight, groggy, distracted, burdened with luggage, navigating an unfamiliar Metro system and trying to find a hotel you’ve never seen, you’re at your most vulnerable. Pickpockets know this. As proof, Avis added:

The receptionist at our hotel in Madrid said 3 other guests (currently staying in the same hotel) were robbed at the airport. 3!!!!

The lesson I learned from Avis’s experience is this: at the risk of sounding like an alarmist, stress early preparedness. Stress that bags don’t have nerve-endings, and therefore need to be in line-of-sight. Emphasize that while we are busy with travel concerns, thieves are focused on finding the chink in our armor. A moment of distraction is the gift of an opportunity to a pickpocket.

Read: Purseology 101 and Pocketology 101

Street crime in Madrid

One day in Spain and we are bombarded with sad stories, particularly of crime in Madrid.

Crime in Madrid

1. Madrid Metro: A couple in their 60s are on a train when they are surrounded. The woman has everything of value in her fanny pack. She has too much of value in her fanny pack. Not only does she have seven credit cards, her driver’s license, and her husband’s driver’s license, but she also has both their social security cards and a slip of paper with the user names and passwords for all their credit cards and banks.

Yep. All stolen. Plus lotsa cash. She felt it happening, but was too intimidated to speak up. Anyway, it happened too fast. The perps got off the train immediately, as if they’d timed the theft to coincide with the doors opening. Which, of course, they had.

Yeah, there really are people like this. Born victims, you might say.

2. Madrid Metro: Same day. A 30ish New York woman traveling with her Spanish boyfriend is hit on an escalator. She has her purse zipped into a large bag on her shoulder. Yes, the bag could have been hanging toward her back, instead of in front of her. She notices the women behind her as she is about to get on the escalator, and she notices that when she gets on, they don’t. She checks her bag and—yep. Purse gone. In it: all the couple’s cash, all their credit cards, their travel itinerary for tomorrow’s flight, the name and address of their hotel, and their passports.

Well, they do have €50. They spend the rest of the day canceling credit cards and making phone calls to recover their travel information. In the morning, they’re able to fly from Madrid to Malaga without passports. They’re to join a cruise ship, but they’re not allowed to board without their passports, and have to fly back to Madrid to visit the embassy.

3. Malaga: Next day. Another American couple, both speakers, land in Malaga and rent a car. They drive to their hotel, a small place on a small street. She goes to check in while he unloads the car. He takes out their two large suitcases and a bellman brings them into the lobby. Meanwhile, the man removes from the car a backpack and a small suitcase, and sets them down beside the car while he fiddles with the unfamiliar lock buttons on the rental car key. When he turns back to the two small bags, one is gone. He assumes the bellman picked it up.

No, the bellman hadn’t. Our friend, a frequent world traveler, hadn’t noticed anyone around him out by the car. In the stolen backpack: all their cash, credit cards, an expensive camera, a very expensive computer loaded with too much data, and the charger for their other computer, which already had a dead battery.

Tapas in Madrid; crime in madrid — Go for the tapas, but stow your stuff safely.

4. Same day, more crime in Madrid: an active woman, a practitioner of yoga, has her purse snatched in a brutal manner. She falls down and, almost two weeks later, is still in a wheelchair.

5. Same day, more crime in Madrid: a wiry, active man, 60ish, who “grew up on the wrong side of the tracks,” feels his male pickpockets working on him. I don’t know why this man carries a cane; he doesn’t appear to need one. But he has it and swings it. Three times, he bashes his accosters. “Got ’em good. They ran.”

bag snatch Madrid metro pickpocket spain street crime thieves

Where does your pickpocketed stuff go?

Jewelry, watches, pens, wallets… Ever wonder where all that pickpocketed stuff goes? Think Mrs. Pickpocket is decked out in your stolen pearls and Swatch, shopping with your credit card? Not likely.

Rarely, we’ve heard of thieves who return personal items, or credit cards. But how do the pickpockets and bag snatchers usually get rid of the goods?

You’ve heard of thieves’ markets…

Last week, Bob and I went scouting at El Rastro, the borderless Sunday market in Madrid, known for thick crowds and said to be crawling with pickpockets. Stalls and stands line street after street, block after block, hawking new and used goods, antiques, hardware, CDs, and everything else imaginable. We were pushed along with the crowd like a slow-moving river clogged with debris.

Thiefhunting is a warm-weather sport. We prowled halfheartedly in the frigid January morning. It was just above freezing and we, like everyone else, wore scarves and gloves and coats that pretty much hid pockets; only purses seemed to be possible targets.

From the wide main street lined with framework stalls sprouted side streets with wares spread on rickety tables and blankets on the ground. One of these streets was particularly crowded.

Progress was painfully slow down the middle of the street and along the sides people couldn’t move at all. The mobs were like misshapen circles pushed together—each circle a tight cluster facing inward, heads bent down.

Pickpocketed stuff

It was some time before we were able to get near enough to see what all the bent heads were looking at. Cloths were spread on the cobblestones, arrayed with the illicit sellers’ goods. Some specialized: only camera and phone batteries, SIM cards and memory chips; only power adapters.

Others displayed a meager mishmash of pens, thumbdrives, power adapters, pearls, glasses, earphones, battery chargers, watches, rings…

Strangely, we didn’t see any digital cameras, and very few mobile phones.

Many of the vendors flaunted an innocent decoy item—a pair of pants, a jacket—which they pretended to offer for sale. A few nervous men appeared to have only several items for sale, furtively flashing them from underneath their shirts.

For the most part, these sellers are not thieves—they’re fences—receivers of stolen goods. It also must be said that not all the goods are necessarily stolen.

As we pushed among knots and clots of shoppers, a wave of near-silent activity rolled in from somewhere above us. A spotter had given a signal. All the vendors scooped up their cloths full of booty and stuffed the bundles into backpacks or plastic bags. Merging into the crowd, they became invisible—an anonymous fragment of the whole.

With the sellers suddenly gone, the clumps of onlookers broke up and the congealed crowd became a flowing river. For a moment, holes were left where each seller’s cluster had stood.

One man was caught and questioned, backpack at his feet. Later, we saw him standing miserably, locked behind an iron gate with his police captors.

As with a school of fish, it goes without saying that one will be snagged, buying the others time. With the patrolling officers out of action, cloths were spread on the street again and the cycle continued.

fence Madrid pickpocket spain thieves

PICKPOCKETS, CON ARTISTS, GANGSTERS, THIEVES, AND TRAVEL