A classic pickpocket maneuver in St. Petersburg, Russia, choreographed by a team and a spotter. Takes place within the tight confines of a cramped convenience store on Nevsky Prospekt.
Continue readingBeware St. Petersburg Pickpockets
Classic Pickpocket team, OUTSTANDING 360° video!
A classic pickpocket team comprises three members. In the video below, watch exactly how they steal a wallet from a backpack, pass it off, then return it.
This video was shot by Emily Slessinger in Barcelona. Emily works for Rylo, the maker of a new 360°-video camera. Emily didn’t intend to film her own theft—she was trying to capture the crowd on the waterfront footbridge. She had no idea what was happening behind her, but her camera caught it all.
Classic pickpocket team
See Emily, dark-haired, sunglassed, holding the Rylo cam above her head. As the gray-hatted pickpocket approaches Emily’s backpack, her two accomplices join her. In an effort to look like ordinary tourists, all three raise their open maps and pretend to consult them while actually using the maps to conceal the theft.
Why don’t the thieves notice that their victim holds aloft a camera? Do they think she’s a tour guide brandishing a tiny device instead of an umbrella? The camera is tiny… and it’s a brand new product. Why would pickpockets suspect that a camera is filming behind the photographer? Perhaps they’ll soon learn, and carrying a Rylo will become the ultimate pickpocket repellent!
Anyway, pickpockets tend to hyper-focus on their target and are not terribly fearful of being caught. Because when they are caught, most victims don’t do anything as long as they have all their property, i.e. the pickpocket failed, didn’t complete the steal, or returned the item. So, little did these thieves know that the tiny Rylo camera had a clear view of everything. Their dipping, their pretense, their faces…
Seriously—watch this video on a tablet or cellphone to get the immersive 360° effect. See what Emily saw in front of her, but don’t miss all the action behind her—that’s where the dirty deed goes down. You’ll see pickpocketing in action as you never have. But you won’t get that close-up, right-there view on a regular computer. [Use this video link, if you don’t see the video below.]
You see the theft. You see the pass-off to the pickpocket’s partner. You don’t see the team remove €100 and $40 from Emily’s wallet. Keep watching and you’ll then see the pickpocket return to the scene of the crime and replace Emily’s wallet.
Why risk the return?
Why did she dare take this dangerous step after having gotten away with the theft? Why would she risk another dip into Emily’s backpack a full minute after a clean getaway? As Emily told me, “I assume it’s because if they got busted, it’s obvious they stole from me if my IDs are on them whereas with just cash, it’s harder to prove.” Exactly. Also, they’d have higher fines to pay if caught with a victim’s credit cards.
Emily said it was “nice of them.” Yes, it saved her a ton of work, cancelling credit cards, replacing her driver’s license, and whatever else she might have had in her wallet. Cash? Losing it is a good lesson, but not as painful as losing a walletful of documents.
But “nice” is not what drove the pickpockets to return the wallet. They’ve been told by their organizers, their bosses, their teachers, to empty the cash only and return the wallet with its documents whenever possible.
Why? Such a risky move! She and her partners are in exactly the same suspicious positions as when they first stole Emily’s wallet. So obvious are they during the return of the wallet that a bystander approaches to tell Emily that she’s been pickpocketed. Why would thieves take that risk?
These low-level pickpockets work for bosses who understand the bigger picture. The big picture is that a lot of stolen cash is not nearly as bad as a lot of stolen credit cards and IDs. With bigger thefts and more police reports being filed, the city would be forced to protect its reputation and tourist economy. More police would be put on the pickpocket detail, more arrests would be made, and more pickpockets would do jail time. Jail is expensive for cities. As it is now, eh…. The pickpockets caught by police are fined €100 to €300, which of course they must acquire by stealing cash. And for the pickpockets, that’s doable. So don’t rock the boat, don’t cause the city to step up pickpocket prosecutions.
The low-level pickpockets must obey their bosses. They are threatened with physical violence. And that’s why you see the pickpocket repeat her pickpocket choreography just to return the stolen wallet with its credit cards and ID. Emily lost only cash. She did not file a police report. If she’d lost her credit cards and IDs, she may have.
Classic technique
And that pass-off to the partner? Textbook-typical! The pickpocket prefers not to hold stolen goods.
Lastly, about that crowd: a large number of pedestrians had been held up while the drawbridge was open for a passing sailboat. The stationary crowd gave the pickpockets a perfect opportunity to choose a target and get into position. Then, when the bridge was lowered, they worked under the cover of their maps. It’s a classic pickpocket team technique, especially favored by East European perpetrators. They want a natural bottleneck, something that slows pedestrian traffic.
So, what are you going to do? You’re going to wear your backpack in front. You’re going to put your real valuables in under-clothes pouches or pickpocket-proof underwear. And you just might get yourself a Rylo 360° video camera, to capture your own theft.
Before your next trip, take a peek at Purseology 101 and Pocketology 101.
6/5/18 edit: For a great close-up video of the steal, see the Rylo 360° pickpocket video reframed. Be sure to look at the third video down on the page.
Pigeon Poop Pickpocket in Marbella, Spain
The famous pigeon poop pickpocket of Barcelona has been spotted in Marbella, Spain. Is he enjoying a working vacation in the southern coastal resort town? Is he now living there in order to enjoy the richer pickings of Brits with second homes instead of low-budget holiday-makers? More than one pickpocket has complained to us that Barcelona’s tourists don’t yield the wished-for wealth, though they make up for their cash-poor wallets in sheer number.
So the pigeon poop perp first spotted by us in Barcelona in 1998, then again in 2008, has not retired and is not currently languishing in jail. Where is he now?
“Well, I can report he’s still at large some 8 yrs after this blog thread started,” reports Pete, of Bedford, UK. “I got ‘done’ this morning, 22nd July 2017 in Marbella, Spain. And there’s little doubt from your photos it was the very same guy.”
“I’d been walking and was sitting on a wall separating two pavements in a quiet part of town (Avenida Mercado). I saw a little guy with a several day growth, big glasses, baseball hat, and the same features as in the photos, plus a few years, shuffling along on the lower pavement behind me, as if he was lost. He must have been sizing me up.
“Next thing, I felt some sort of liquid stuff hit my head and shoulders, put my hand round and back it came with bits of a sort of brown porridge on it. Initial reaction was to look up to see if someone had chucked something out of a window. But no open windows above. So then I thought bird shit? But was a bit confused when I sniffed the stuff and it smelt of cocoa drink.”
The pigeon poop perp learned long ago that the yuck factor trumps logic. Any old goop will serve, as long as it’s disgusting and the victim wants it off.
“Just then, the little guy suddenly appeared coming back behind me, and called out ‘Bird? Bird’ to me, as if to say he knew it was a bird that got me. I shrugged, still in disgust at the thought, when he motioned me to come across to see him. I hesitated. He insisted, waving a bottle of water and a packet of tissues. So I approached him. He commiserated.”
The pigeon poop pickpocket has his psychology down. He knows how to behave in order to gain his victims’ confidence. (Hence the word con artist.)
“He started brushing me down, then circled around me and said “You’ve got some on your back, take of your rucksack, go on, take it off”. At this stage I was kind of overwhelmed at his concern to help me. He even got me to circle around whilst cleaning me down, which meant of course that my rucksack was behind me and out of my sight for 20 secs or so. Then, he got me to take off my shirt, indicating it was fouled.”
In his Academy-Award-winning role as good samaritan, the pigeon poop pickpocket performs with aplomb. So convincing is his good-guy cameo, his discombobulated victims trust him like obedient children. Just get the yucky stuff off me, please!
“Looking back, my collaboration with this suggestion was pure idiocy because there I was standing with no shirt on when he suddenly took his leave of me, gesturing to keep the water and tissues he’d given me. Even then, I had no idea of the advantage he’d taken of me. After shaking down my shirt, I put it back on and slowly walked on, partly in disgust at, as I imagined, having had a bird score a direct hit on me, and partly full of admiration for this altruistic citizen.”
…And the Oscar goes to…
“Half an hour later I walked into a small store to buy a cheap tee-shirt to replace the fouled one. I took out my wallet from the small pocket on the outside of my rucksack where I normally keep it, to pay. I opened it and to my horror it was completely empty of cash, whereas only an hour ago it most certainly contained two €50 notes and one £50 note. The penny dropped. This ‘kind citizen’ thief had had the damned cheek to remove, open, drain and replace my wallet whilst he was ostensibly brushing down my back. All in 20 seconds, no problem to a skilled operator.
“My first reaction was to go and hunt him down, as he was most likely ‘working’ Marbella old town that day. My second, that a confrontation, in which I might well have grabbed his bag, could have been turned against me as an attempted robbery on him. So, still in a bit of shock, I decided this was just a painful lesson in life that had cost me €150. Then I thought… next time I’m in Marbella, I will hunt him down, track him from a distance, and get some telephoto shots of him working his con trick on some other poor soul, before shouting a warning to the victim. But then I started my Google search for ‘bird dropping con man’ and up came this blog. All I can say is that this smooth operator needs his picture up in every tourist area of Spain. Thanks for your interest on this site!”
Like 70-80% of pickpocket victims, Pete did not file a police report. I don’t blame him at all—there are many reasons not to. He did complete my survey though, which is extremely helpful in enabling me tally incidences and frequency of reporting. [Thank you so much Pete!]
As I said in my second story of the pigeon poop pickpocket (this is my third):
This is a perfect con. (Con comes from confidence, right?) He plays the good Samaritan. He gains your confidence. He creates a strategy to touch your body wherever he wants to, wherever the disgusting mess supposedly is. A pickpocket can’t steal without touching, right? Why wait for an opportunity? That’s for amateurs. Create one! I call these thieves strategists and they are devious. Look, he makes you grateful to him. He desensitizes you to his touch. And he employs the yuck factor, taking advantage of the truth that bird shit directly triggers the ick region of the brain, a highly effective distraction.
He’s still out there, I’m sure. And he’ll find unsuspecting victims every day. All we can do is spread the word.
Hardworking Paris pickpocket needs $2M for U.S. visa
“I know you!” the girl said when she turned around and got a glimpse of Bob Arno. He and I had followed the girl and her friend because, though we only saw them from behind, their posture and behavior told us they were hardworking Paris pickpockets.
We’d been ready to head home after a long day of thiefhunting in Paris when the sky broke loose and rain fell in buckets. Bob and I dove into the first Metro station we could find, drenched.
And there on the platform, two thieves; a girl-pair of pickpockets. I got my video running as we pushed onto the rush-hour train behind them. The train doors smacked close on my shoulder and opened again. I pressed closer behind Bob and the doors closed. The girls were smashed up against us.
Crowds are ideal for thievery, but this train might have been too sardiney for the pickpockets to plunge their hands downward. Unable to work, they got off at the next stop.
Paris pickpocket pursuit
We followed, which is when the younger one turned and recognized Bob—just as she did in October of 2014. Back then, two and a half years ago, she was part of a swarm of child pickpockets. I thought the youngest boy must have been about ten. She had recognized Bob from the film National Geographic made about us, Pickpocket King, which is on Youtube. Of its millions of views (almost 8,000,000 for the English language version alone), many viewers are criminal pickpockets.
This time, when the girl-thief recognized Bob, her face lit up and she reminded us that we’d met two and a half years ago. She tried to assuage her jittery older partner while dragging us off to dinner at a large pizza joint.
Dinner conversation was jolly, despite the elementary French and occasional phone app-translations. The partner slowly warmed up. Turns out the girl, Gh____, is a woman of 28. She still tells police that she’s 17 in order to avoid jail. Good trick. Common trick. And in her case, pretty believable if you don’t know her from previous arrests.
Our official Paris police source, the Mysterious Monsieur F, tells us that arrestees often claim to be under 18, and of course they often use aliases. When the police doubt the perp’s age, they can ask to do a bone scan, which may corroborate the under-18 claim. But the Paris pickpockets don’t have to give consent. That recently happened, the Mysterious Monsieur F. told me, with a 92-year-old male pickpocket. If they’re lucky, police can match these perps to previous arrest records. (If that 92-year-old has arrests spanning more than 18 years—poof!—busted!)
Portrait of a pickpocket
Gh____ has six children! Right, I wonder why. Police can’t jail perps who are pregnant or carrying an infant. So the pickpockets have lots of babies and share them around. But Gh___ said she truly loves having many children, loves coming home to the commotion with them all swarming around her, and wants to have many more. She’s a Gypsy, and the Gypsy culture truly does revere its children.
Gh____ was first married at 13 and had her first child soon after. Which makes me wonder: were any of the children in the gang we met in 2014 Gh____’s children? They could have been. I regret that I didn’t think to ask her.
We are connected to Gh____ on facebook, but she is completely illiterate. She started pickpocketing at a very young age and didn’t go to school. All her family are thieves, she told us. I wonder now if that includes her kids.
Gh____’s partner that day was V___, who seemed older, and can write. V___ wrote down Gh____’s contact info for us. She has five children and doesn’t want any more.
Gh____ told us that she recognizes all the civilian police officers, and they know her. They can even recognize each other from behind. They also know her distinctive tattoos, which she got in jail. [Aha! So she has spent time in jail!]
Gh____ claims she only takes cash, not credit cards. (We find that hard to believe, given the incredible potential for exploiting cards. But credit card fraud is a higher level crime than cash-stealing, and why should she trust us with all her secrets?) She’s saving up to join other family members in the U.S. She needs two million dollars for a visa, she said. Her family in the U.S. make a lot of money with credit cards, and she wants to join them.
She then displayed her hefty wad: at least $1,300 in fresh U.S. hundred-dollar bills and a few 50s. (All the bills looked new; had she just exchanged a collection of foreign currency? Or was she stalking marks she spotted at cash machines?)
Gh____ insisted on paying for dinner, then got antsy to get back to work. It looks like she’ll get that two million!
Thanks to pickpockets, Chinese now shun travel to France
Asian tourists have been scared away from Paris by the plague of pickpockets who target them. According to Jean-François Zhou, President of the Chinese Association of Travel Agencies in France, the perception of insecurity in France has turned them instead to Russia, which they perceive as safe.
Chinese tourists to Paris
Chinese tourists to Paris, Zhou said, “are robbed in the Palace of Versailles, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, in front of their hotel, descending buses … In high season, there is not a day without tourists being assaulted. I saw an 80-year-old man seriously injured because he was trying to resist thieves. Women pushed, fall and have their bag stolen with all their papers … This created a panic on Chinese social networks. The Chinese began to turn away from France since last year.”
Paris and Marseille are the French cities most avoided by Chinese, Japanese, and Korean travelers.
An article in Le Parisien states “The problem is that the police are not supported by justice. Often, these offenders are released within a few hours, or the sentence is not proportionate.”
In October of 2014, Bob and I watched the arrest and jailing of a pickpocket. We happened to find the same man the very next morning on the loose in the subway. “The police arrest them regularly then see the same faces on the streets and in the Metro a day later. Frustrated, the police soldier on,” I wrote then.
“In 2016, there were 1.6 million Chinese tourists to Paris compared to 2.2 million in 2015!” Zhou said. “The decline is 39% of Japanese and 27% of Koreans. Our tourists have turned to Russia, which is less attractive but at least it is a safe country. For Putin, it is an economic windfall.
“I have been in France for twenty-five years, and I myself have seen the decline of France in terms of security. Before, the Chinese operators deplored the insecurity in Italy, today it is France and more particularly Paris and Marseilles which we speak of. There are many regions in France where tourism can be leisurely pursued, but Paris is ranked No. 1 in Europe in terms of the increase in delinquency.”
In January of 2017 in a Paris hotel parking lot, six thieves laid in wait for a bus to arrive returning Chinese tourists from a shopping excursion. As the shoppers descended the bus laden with purchases, the thieves assaulted them and grabbed their bags. The six thieves were all in their 20s, all had been previously jailed, and all lived in the Seine-Saint-Denis district of Paris which is commonly referred to as a no-go zone. Seine-Saint-Denis is a majority Muslim, majority immigrant district.
This mass raid on Chinese shoppers’ buses had become a new pattern, storming relaxed and burdened tourists on the threshold of their hotels—an ostensibly safe and secure place.
The thieves are not too clever. Have they not heard of overfishing? They prey on their favorite target and as a result, their favorite target stops visiting.
Pickpockets look like tourists
Pickpockets look like tourists, and it’s not by accident. Replete with water bottles, backpacks, camera, baseball caps, these “props” are intended to camouflage the pickpockets’ unscrupulous objective. If she looks much like you, a tourist, you won’t think twice when she, just another “tourist,” stands beside you. Her costume elicits trust.
We travelers make subtle, unconscious snap judgments of those around us. One person may cause no reaction, no alarm bells, while another prompts a slight step away, an extra glance, without even thinking. Why? What is it?
Pickpockets in Girona
The two women you see pictured here strolled through the German Garden in Girona, Spain, just like any other visitors. They shouldn’t have raised an eyebrow. But they turned where “BJ” and her husband turned, and they paused where BJ and her husband paused. BJ made a subliminal note of that.
Still, that apparently innocent behavior wasn’t unsettling in the least. Stopping on a lookout balcony, BJ raised her camera toward the beautiful view. It was only seconds later when her husband shouted and grabbed onto one of the women that BJ realized something was amiss. In fact, what flashed though her mind in the first instant was that her husband had saved the woman from jumping.
BJ saw her own purple/pink wallet in the thief’s hand and snatched it back. She can’t recall the woman ever being close enough to touch her, let alone having enough time to open the zipper of her purse. The nearness of these ordinary women was not a threat, not a thought, not even on her radar.
Exactly the reaction, or lack of reaction, that this sort of sneak thief depends upon.
However, they were on BJ’s husband’s radar. He’d kept half an eye on the two as they followed too quickly and stopped when he and BJ stopped. He saw the blond go into BJ’s purse.
“Hubby” held onto the thief and raised a ruckus until the women’s “thug” protector arrived, all chest-thrusting-threatening, though he was a young punk and a foot shorter than Hubby.
Pickpockets look like tourists
The photo that BJ had the presence of mind to capture is wonderful. There is shouting going on, but we don’t see it. Hubby wears an expression of shock and disbelief (I was asked to blur his face.) as he holds onto the thief and looks desperately for help. Meanwhile, the thief smiles beatifically! Her posture shows no distress, no resistance. She looks straight into the camera… relaxed! She’s in the firm grip of a shouting man whose wife she’s just stolen from, and she appears amused!
She knew how this incident would conclude. Probably, she’d been in the same position many times. “You have your stuff, so what’s the problem?” she asked. Maybe she even giggled.
But to BJ and her husband, this was a serious criminal matter. They’d caught a thief in the act, had her in a vice grip, and wanted her arrested. “We didn’t back down,” BJ said, “but what do you do with them when you’ve caught them?” There were no police around.
And there was this very aggressive thug. “Eventually there was this ‘he could have a knife’ moment so hubby let the girl go and they left,” BJ told me.
Both BJ and Hubby had taken all the appropriate safe-stowing precautions. BJ’s wallet had been zipped in and attached to her purse. The wallet contained only a little cash, her driver’s license, and one credit card that could be quickly cancelled.
Unsatisfying ending
BJ and her husband thought they could make a difference. They thought they could put this one trio of thieves out of business, at least for a while.
But the pickpockets walked away, smiling. For BJ and her husband, it was not a satisfying conclusion. They never did find a police officer in Girona, and those in Barcelona were uninterested.
In the beginning of our thiefhunting many years ago, Bob Arno and I thought, like BJ and Hubby, that we could make a difference by bringing video evidence to the police. We received the same reaction our brave travelers got: a laugh, a puff of air, a confirmation that yeah, the police know who they are, what they do, even where they live. But laws are loose and pickpockets make it their business to know the laws. All over Europe thieves tell us: more than anyplace, they like to work in Spain.
Bag stolen in Barcelona cafe
The loss of a valuable shoulder bag stolen in Barcelona was devastating to the victim. The bag had been on the floor beside her chair in a café. The theft happened in just a moment’s lapse of attention.
My name is Rashmi Raman. I am a 32-year-old Indian woman from Delhi where I am law professor (yes, the irony of being a lawyer and getting robbed is not lost on me).
My handbag containing 2,200 euros, 800 USD and a few hundred British Pounds along with a lot of other currency souvenirs from my travels and all my bank cards and national identity cards, passports (old and current), yellow fever certificate (from my time in Africa) and my journal, a book, personal cosmetics and electronics was robbed from right next to my chair while I had a morning coffee with a colleague at No. 3, Calle Pelai in Barcelona at 10.40 AM on Friday July 22.
Bag stolen in Barcelona café
The café we were sitting inside was Subway, right across the street from our hotel. I wouldn’t normally have had all my money and papers on me for just stepping out for a coffee though I have been traveling with all this on me for years now. I don’t know how to rationalize what happened to me but I guess it’s just really really rotten luck.
I filed a police report immediately at the underground precinct at Plaça Catalunya. The next day I went back to the café to meet the owner and request to see the CCTV footage. He was kind enough to show it to me. I watched in horror as the CCTV footage clearly showed a white man, dressed in checks, calmly grab my brown leather bag, throw something white over it and walk out of the café. Ten seconds later I saw myself leaping up in panic on the video.
I don’t know how I survived it… My life has been a nightmare the past weeks since then. Getting back to India without a passport and no money was hellish. I don’t know how long it will take me to come to terms with everything I lost that day.
What inhuman madness would possess someone to steal every scrap of my worldly belongings and leave me destitute and without identity in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language? Why couldn’t he have had the courage or decency to return my passport and identity cards to the hotel? The hotel’s key card was in the bag. It is not too difficult to understand what hell you are unleashing on unsuspecting tourists by robbing them like this.
I will never see again the familiar pages and the many beloved stamps on my passports. I cannot understand what use they are to him? He probably threw away everything except the cash. He threw away the hard-earned records of my whole life.
Don’t blame the restaurant—thieves are everywhere!
I felt really silly actually going to Subway for a coffee that morning—in a month of traveling in Spain that was the first and only morning I chose a chain restaurant over the dozens of much more charming local cafés… I can’t imagine what got into me to go to Subway that day.
I was staying at the Catalonia Ramblas which is across the street from the Subway on 3, Calle Pelai. The hotel staff were really amazing and helped me file the police report, translated for me, and were a huge support.
I’m using my real name in case the thief ever reads this and he has all my ID (as well as my personal journal). Perhaps nobody knows more about me than he does!
Thanks for the work you are doing documenting theft in Barcelona and giving victims like me a space to vent—it is much appreciated.
— Rashmi Raman
I feel for Rashmi. I, too, often carry a loaded shoulder bag when I travel. And that’s despite everyone’s advice—including my own—to leave it in the hotel room. Sometimes the room isn’t ready. Or you don’t feel great about the security in the room. Or you need that cash or those documents with you. Sometime, you just need to carry your stuff.
In those cases though, there’s one rule I never, ever break: keep physical contact with the bag. It’s big and heavy, but it stays on my lap. Or tight behind my back on the chair. Or maybe with my foot through the straps (very rare). Even that practice is not failsafe—bag snatchers may rip and run. I never, ever hang my bag on the back of a chair. My husband, Bob Arno, is a white-hat pickpocket. Watch him easily steal items from customers in a café.
For almost every bag stolen in Barcelona, and there are many, there’s a rule broken. I said almost. Read the horror story about the bag stolen in Barcelona right off a woman’s lap!
Pickpockets in Rio — Anti-theft rules
Anti-theft Rules for Rio
How to Protect Yourself from Street Thieves and Muggers
“Be more vigilant; be aware of your surroundings,” warn US government agencies to travelers heading to Rio. Be aware of pickpockets in Rio.
But what does it really mean: “be more vigilant”? That advice seems to be given on a daily basis now, whether about visiting France, attending the Olympics in Rio, or a music festival anywhere.
Robbed in Rio
How should the ordinary citizen become more alert, more aware, and more vigilant nowadays? What does that even mean?
Well, consider where you are, first, and the specific risks, whether you’re on a Mediterranean cruise, or in a club in Paris, or on a beach in Rio. There are smart tactics useful for all those places.
[Edited to add: The New York Times reports on 8/8/16 that “there were nearly 11,000 street robberies in June” this year—and that’s only reported street robberies!]
Pickpockets in Rio
Pickpockets in Rio are not seasoned criminals—many are simply street urchins, teenage muggers, and simple pickpockets looking for an opportunity. They are the homeless piraña kids who have little to fear from law enforcement, and behave like pack animals, circling their prey in perpetual motion, looking for a new easy score. They are looking for another uninitiated mark who simply doesn’t understand the risk.
A perfect mark or an inexperienced tourist gives off signals which the perps pick up on. Their internal computer tells them this looks easy, no danger of getting caught, and I can sell that iPhone to a fence in less than thirty minutes. Easy work.
You can minimize the risk of a bad experience by following a few ground rules and understanding who your opponents are. Here are three fundamental rules to put into daily practice, in Rio and elsewhere.
Anti-theft Rules for Rio
1. Don’t give off the signals that identify you as their next meal ticket.
The most obvious behaviors to avoid not just while in Rio, but in many summer destinations:
•Dress down, do not wear an expensive watch or any jewelry, and especially not a gold chain or necklace. Thieves stealing watches do not use tricky moves to open buckles as in a Las Vegas stage show. They grab it and rip it off, breaking the strap. Do not think that a Rolex is safe because of its sturdy metal strap or double latch. Thieves in Rio are experts at twisting a Rolex face to break a pin in the strap, which is the weak point in a Rolex watch strap or bracelet.
•Under no circumstances should you hang an expensive camera around your neck.
•Don’t use an iPhone in public.
•Don’t use an ATM unguarded. If you must use an ATM, carefully analyze the location, and look for scruffy individuals in near proximity.
•Do not carry a wallet or credit cards in a slanted front pants pocket which gapes an bit when you walk. Pickpockets in Rio operate with speed, not finesse. The tighter the pockets, the harder it is for the thieves. Crowded public transportation is common setting for pickpockets almost everywhere during the summer.
•Walk far from the curb on a busy street, to avoid marauding scooter thieves who snatch bags from shoulders or hands. When it’s dark, walk against the traffic and away from the curb. Wise Europeans already know to wear their back packs in front when walking in public.
•Sitting in a public bus, tour bus, tram, or train requires extra care. If you sit next to an open window, watch out. When the bus is still or creeping in traffic, aggressive kids jump up to grab a phone within reach, or leap onto the tire to reach inside the window.
There are tons more travel safety tips, but if you follow these suggestions above you have already eliminated the most common thefts in Rio.
2. Understand how and when to be defensive and when to be passive.
•Should you fend off a bare-chested youth who grabs something from you or attempts to mug you or your significant other? If it’s broad daylight and there are lots of people around, being forceful is generally fine. That means getting into a low position with good balance and watching your back for an attack from behind. The darker it gets the harder it is to evaluate the confrontation. Is it a team mugging you? How many are they? Each scenario requires different advice. A gang of muggers will often have one member with a weapon of some sort, usually a knife. They’re not seeking to harm you physically unless they are cornered or counter attacked.
•Don’t expect bystanders to step in and assist you. There is a dislike in Rio between the wealthy and the street kids—a class conflict between the rich (you, the tourist) and the not-so-rich. The general public will seldom come to your aid or interfere for fear of their own safety.
•Being cut or knifed in broad daylight is not common, but if you do hold on to a thief and shout for police, his buddies may quickly appear to help him. More common are attacks by single operators—a poorly dressed young male with bare chest and flip-flops or bare feet.
•The more sophisticated pickpockets in Rio use entirely different techniques. You avoid them and becoming their victim by using travel pouches hung inside your pants from a loop that your belt goes through. All online travel-accessory stores sell various inexpensive models. Those that hang under your shirt from a string around your neck are not sufficient in Rio.
3. Pro tips: Minimize the risk by identifying the perps early, and getting out of their line of sight.
•Sensing the approach of a mugger is half the battle.
•Try to stay on major streets and don’t deviate into unknown territory. Plan your itinerary and your exact routes. Ask your tour guide or the hotel staff if your route is safe to walk and what to avoid. But realize the scene changes drastically from day to evening to night.
•Muggers will often stand out by moving irrationally and not fitting into the scene. But this does not mean that every poor youngster is a criminal; it just means that you must observe your surroundings all the time, especially behind you. If you sense that a suspect (or a gang) is closing in on you—think National Geographic animal kill documentaries in Africa, predators circling their prey—get yourself into a defensive position, and certainly try to move away from a location where you are vulnerable.
If you’ve read this far, you’ve got to see this video. It’s theft after theft in Rio, some successful, some only attempts. Watch the utter nonchalance of the thieves, and of some of the victims, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atbbjjqo_dM
Robbed in Rio
Survey: Did you file a police report when you were pickpocketed?
Did you file a police report when you were pickpocketed?
I’ll be grateful for your response to this short survey? It applies to a single incident, but go ahead and fill it out for each incident, if you like. Thank you!
Thank you!
Gang of 11 Pickpockets Stole Mobile Phones
Pickpockets Stole Mobile Phones
Who says pickpocketing is a petty crime?
A gang of 11 thieves was just sentenced in London. These pickpockets stole mobile phones on the London Tube and supposedly made about $15,000 a day. Police recovered £143,000 but credit the gang with making more than five million pounds through stealing phones. Let me do the math for you: that’s more than seven million dollars. Is that petty?
These thieves belong to a criminal network and systematically steal mobile phones from Tube passengers. It’s not a one-off crime. The British Transport Police Chief Superintendent Paul Brogden calls this an “industrial-scale criminal operation.” Can it possibly be considered petty?
More than a thousand mobile phones were seized with a large quantity of cash.
British Transport Police press release.
You can tell that term really irks me. The entire premise that pickpocketing is a petty crime irks me. How much evidence do we need?
You’d think I’d be used to this kind of report, after 22 years of pickpocket research.
These characters were all sentenced to two to three years; head thief Nawid Moshfiq got a little more time. What will they serve, half? Less? Then what? Will they go back to work in London? Maybe, or they’ll move on to another city where the police don’t know them.