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
Thieves who operate on the principles of stealth, motion, or impedence strive to minimize contact with their victim. Zero face-time is their preference. Minimal body contact, zero notice, zero recognition. Other pickpockets, though, cause contact and use it to their advantage.
Bob Arno and I met one of these physical-types in 1997 in Tangier, Morocco. He claimed to be retired and agreed to talk about his former career, though he was reluctant to demonstrate his moves.
However, at the end of our interview, without explanation, he sort-of hugged Bob, bounced around on his toes a bit, and laughed like a hyena.
What Al’alla-the-pickpocket did in Tangier in 1997 was exactly what is referred to in Barcelona today as the Ronaldinho move. He gave a little hop and collided into Bob with a gentle force. He began to laugh idiotically, raising and lowering his head while he threw one arm around Bob’s back and clamped his shoulder in a friendly manner. His feet were dancing and shuffling, knocking into Bob’s foot and wrapping around his calf.
Bob had braced himself at the first instant of Al’alla’s “attack,” but he didn’t resist the peculiar, intimate behavior. Al’alla continued his rollicksome moves for a few seconds, then gave a great forward kick in the air as a final flourish, and stepped away from Bob.
Was that a Moroccan farewell?
We were deep within a labyrinthine medina, led to this opium den rendezvous by an unsavory guide. (The rest of the encounter is documented here.) I was doubtful about getting out with all our equipment, certain we’d be robbed, if not worse. When we finally did emerge from the maze of alleys, our guide grinned—but it looked like a leer.
“This from Al’alla,” he said, holding out the newspaper-stuffed prop wallet Bob carries. “He name-ed that dance ‘rugby-steal’.”
It was a slick move and, between the baffling behavior and all the physical contact, Bob never felt the extraction.
The Ronaldinho is the simplest of pickpocket attempts. A little friendly football play and who’s going to complain or suspect? If the thief fails, no big deal. He’ll move on and try again, improving his M.O. as he practices. It’s a starter theft technique for aspiring pickpockets.
Barcelona gets a large number of illegal immigrants from North Africa. When they can’t work, some resort to pocket picking. The Ronaldinho is their basic training. It succeeds often enough, and is endlessly repeatable.
Barcelona gets a large number of young visitors. They’re easy-going, gullible, not suspicious. They want to like the locals, but they can’t tell who’s an outsider. The harmless moment of universal bonding through sports takes them by surprise but is not offensive.
Al’alla had become a pickpocket as a child in Tangier, then traveled to Barcelona for the big time. It was the sixties, and while Tangier reveled in flower power and hippie freedom, its drugs were routed to Europe through Spain. Al’alla found picking pockets far more lucrative and infinitely safer than drug trafficking. People carried cash then, not plastic, and naiveté in travelers was more prevalent than sophistication. On La Rambla, people strolled like clots through an artery. No one suspected the darting figure of a well-dressed gentleman, so obviously in a hurry, as he ricocheted off the moving mob.
One of Barcelona’s working pickpockets demonstrates the “football steal” on Bob, before it was named the “Ronaldinho.” Although he’s in front of Bob here, he reaches around to Bob’s back pocket and finishes with a tug at the pants hem.
A year or so after meeting Al’alla, we spoke with another Ronaldinho practitioner.
We’d been watching a couple of clumsy pickpockets as they snuck a wallet from a German tourist’s backpack. But before the thief could move away, he fumbled and dropped the wallet.
The victim wheeled around. Instantly, the pickpocket bent and picked up the wallet, politely offering it to his unwitting mark, who thanked him. They shook hands. The thieves drifted away, back on the prowl. First we asked the German: your backpack was zipped—how do you think your wallet fell out? “I have no idea,” he replied, unwilling to dwell on the incident.
We left him with his perplexity and caught up with the rogue pair, asking if they spoke a little English. Very little. French? Oui, they were Algerian.
“We are not police,” Bob began in French, “but we saw you take the man’s wallet.”
“Oh, no, monsieur dropped it!”
“We want to know your specialty, what kind of stealing you’re best at. For research!”
“Oui, research!” The men laughed nervously, but made no move to leave us. They glanced at each other, then suddenly, the taller of the two, the one who’d done the stealing, slung his arm around Bob’s shoulders. Taking quick, tiny steps in place, he twisted his body left and right.
“Play soccer? Football?” He moved his legs against Bob’s as if to trip him.
Bob stiffened, aware of the maneuver, this playful sports trick. But he had a real wallet in his back pocket, containing real money. He couldn’t allow the tactic to play out. He slapped his hand over his back pocket, trapping the thief’s hand in his grip.
“Enough!” Bob said.
“No football, eh? No research.” The thief transferred his embrace to his partner, and the two ambled off.
Late the same afternoon Bob and I both zeroed in on a well-dressed gentleman in a beige sport jacket. We tracked him at a distance until he disappeared in a crowd. We ran to catch up and burst into the moving crowd a moment too late. Our suspect was down on one knee, brushing and shaking the lower pant leg of his startled victim. He rose and apologized, as if he’d been trying to help.
The victim thanked him, but didn’t know what for. He was dazed and befuddled when I accosted him, asking brusquely if he still had his money. He felt his front pants pocket. No! It was gone! $2,000! His head swiveled wildly, but the thief was gone.
“He wanted to play football!” the victim said, “Right there in the crowd!”
Our multi-talented Barcelona pickpocket acquaintance later demonstrated the soccer swipe for us, this friendly male-on-male distraction technique. Side-to-side shoulder hug, a little leg-play, a little shake of the pant leg, and the wallet is gone, all in good fun. This was way back in August 2001, before the technique was named Ronaldinho.
In our 19-year worldwide thiefhunting experience, Ronaldinho seems to be a technique specific to North Africans, practiced by them wherever they may work. But that doesn’t mean they get away with it everywhere.
Many pickpocket methods are universal. Specialized techniques emerge from a specific population, travel with their practitioners, and are eventually taken up by other local thieves. Barcelona’s pigeon poop ploy is one of those—it came out of South America as a general “dirty-him-clean-him M.O., and was brilliantly adapted to blame the city’s birds. This movement of methods fascinates Bob and me as we study criminal subcultures around the world.
We must also keep in mind Barcelona’s symbiotic reputation. To visitors it’s fun and loose, good for partying late into the night. Pickpockets come specifically because they know of its loose legal system, and because it’s full of fun-loving tourists who party into the night.
A pickpocket steals from a back pocket, aka the sucker pocket.
Over-confidence is the enemy of travelers in unfamiliar lands. The know-it-all risks loss and embarrassment. Henry started his story with the wistful remark we’ve heard countless times:
“I didn’t think it could happen to me,” he said, shaking his head. “I never even sensed the other guy was near me.”
Henry and Kathy were world travelers. We met them in the third month of their current foreign travel adventure. Only in their forties, they were quite young compared to others with the time and resources for extended travel. Both were physically fit and mentally sharp. To Kathy’s alert, quiet reserve, Henry radiated self-assurance and arrogance.
On this day, as usual, Kathy carried their cash in the deep front pocket of her tight shorts. Henry carried nothing but the plastic boarding card issued to him by his cruise ship.
Another pickpocket's back-pocket technique.
The couple was standing on a street corner near the souk in Casablanca when a large local man approached. Glancing at Henry’s Blue Jays cap, the interloper leaned into Henry, lightly knocking his shoulder.
“You from Canada?” he slurred, in a drunken act. Henry, always on his toes, second guessed the ulterior motive.
“Keep your hands off me, pal,” he said threateningly.
The stranger backed away and glanced across the street. Kathy followed his look and watched as a second man approached them. He was the big guy’s partner.
“Sorry, I have no use for this,” the partner said, and held out Henry’s boarding card. The couple had never even noticed him near them; yet somehow, he had been.
I like this story for its considerate thief. Most, with hopes of snagging a credit card quashed, would drop the worthless plastic in a trash bin, or more likely on the ground. The notion of a quixotic thief appeals to my wispy romantic being. Luciano, that ever-present menace on Naples’ trams, told us that, since he doesn’t use the credit cards he steals, he drops them into a mail box so they can be returned to their owners.
Had Henry Smartypants read the U.S. State Department’s report on Morocco, he would have known that “criminals have targeted tourists for robberies, assaults, muggings, thefts, purse snatching, pickpocketing, and scams of all types,” and that “most of the petty crime occurs in the medina/market areas….” Perhaps he would have thwarted the thief who snuck up behind him; his antennas would certainly have been up.
If misfortune befalls the unwary and swindlers seek the weak, enlighten yourself and raise your awareness.
