Bob Arno, the go-to guy on street scams, was on the NBC Weekend Today show on November 22.
He was on Fox & Friends on November 29. The video made Yahoo’s top ten of the day.
Both programs show some of our video of thieves-in-the-act, and both are examples of network news soundbite-style segments. They don’t want to know anything about why, just three minutes or so of your best stuff for ratings. Nothing to be proud of, really.
Both videos are embedded below.
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.
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.
Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Two (part-d): Research Before You Go
Article in today’s Schenectady Daily Gazette
Sandy and Frances thought little of the gaggle of girls who flopped onto the bench they were resting on. There were more girls than could fit on the bench: half a dozen or more. They were pretty, 15-16-year-olds and with them was an adult woman. Their teacher, perhaps, Frances thought.
The girls cozied up to Sandy, making room for one more to squeeze onto the bench. They wiggled and squirmed, like impatient students in class, while the woman spoke to them. Sandy and Frances didn’t understand the language they spoke.
The couple didn’t notice that all the other benches were empty. They didn’t wonder why this gang, or “class,” had to crowd onto their bench. They were not the least suspicious of the girls.
“Why don’t we move so they can all fit,” Sandy said after a couple of minutes. He and Frances settled on the next bench.
“We needn’t have bothered,” he said, watching as the group immediately left the bench and the area.
Londoners Sandy and Frances had just flown into Barcelona to take a cruise. They were too early to board, but it was a gorgeous, sunny afternoon and they didn’t mind waiting the ten minutes before the gangway opened.
Soon they were in their stateroom, unpacking. Sandy opened a drawer to put away his wallet and, of course, you know: his pocket was empty. He’d had it in the cargo pocket of his pants, “secured” with two buttons. He told us how he went cold all over. How he checked and rechecked his pocket, not believing his wallet was really gone. But from the first instant, he knew exactly what had happened.
Are you groaning? Not another Barcelona story, please! I’m afraid so.
Sandy told us over and over how stupid he felt for letting it happen. There was a lot of money in the wallet, but his insurance would replace it. He just felt like an idiot. Although I’ve never heard of this particular technique, I assured him that this gang was well-practiced in the art of portraying innocence. They knew exactly how to behave, how to avoid rousing suspicion.
The thief hadn’t even unbuttoned the pocket. She didn’t need to. The gap between the two buttons was large enough for a slim hand and a wallet.
They got thousands of British pounds. I don’t think they’ll work for a while. We’re all safe from this gang, at least for the next week or two.
To a pair of pickpockets in London, Lionel Skidmore looked like an easy target. The thieves mounted a bus, then immediately turned and got off, pushing past Lionel, who was just getting on. Checking and noticing that his wallet was gone, Lionel ran after the perps and demanded the return of his wallet. One thief took off. The other pointed to the ground, where the wallet had been dropped. Nothing was missing from it.
The novel part of this story, to me, is that Lionel’s wallet was deep in his pocket, attached to a chain. Granted, the metal ring attachment was a weak one, according to Lionel, but the pickpockets didn’t know that when they decided to take the wallet.
This reminds me that there are no rules in pickpocketing; or rather, that there are, but they’re all bustable. For example, how many of you have heard that wrapping a rubber band around your wallet makes it harder to steal? Hands up. Right, I thought so. No, the thieves tell us—a rubber band makes their job easier. It gives them something to grip, and it keeps the wallet closed, preventing corners from catching in the extraction.
It’s easy to think that a wallet on a chain is safe (no comment on the fashion statement it makes). You’d think that pickpockets would move on to an unchained wallet—the vast majority of them. Turns out that the chain makes a handy little extraction tool. And according to Lionel, a long-time chain-user, most chains are cheap, Chinese-made metal with weak attachment rings.
Lionel showed us his new, heavy-weight chain-attachment-ring. Looks strong! But it’s threaded through a thin layer of worn, flimsy leather at the corner of his wallet. Easily the weakest link in a weak system. A useless grommet, freed from the loose leather, slides around the ring. Lionel feels his chained wallet is secure. His (false) sense of security allows him to travel the world with confidence.
Rome, Italy—Termini Station serves up buses, trains, and the subway. Four long rows of ticket machines busily dispense tickets and confound travelers. Traffic is brisk. Meanwhile, thieves and con artists loiter, watching. Bob and I loitered, too.
An unkempt man pushed in close to a family trying to figure out the machine. The man kept offering advice, though he clearly hadn’t a clue about the machine. The family repeatedly waved him away. After a while he moved to another group at a machine halfway down the row, where he was equally unwelcome.
A pair of cops sauntered past and Bob had a conversation with them. Berlusconi’s drastic anti-immigrant program has not made a dent in crime, these and other cops told us. Bob strolled with the patrolling police while I took up a position next to the new plexiglass wall that protects ticket-buyers at agent windows from pickpockets and bag thieves. No longer do mobs press against passengers who must set down bags and fumble with wallets while buying tickets.
Unattended luggage caught my eye. A large suitcase topped with a sleeping bag stood several yards away from the ticket machines. Who could have turned his back on his belongings in such a place?
Bob returned with the police, who removed the troublesome wastrel from the midst of the ticket machine crowd. I could be wrong, but it appeared they photographed him first with a mobile phone camera.
Bob and I scrutinized the messy line of machine-users, trying to guess who the unwatched bag belonged to. Few by few, people left the machines and the bag remained. Eventually, only one young couple remained, the rest of the crowd being freshly arrived and unattached to the lonely luggage. But this couple never glanced toward the baggage at all. Either it wasn’t theirs, or they were part of a sting, as demonstratively ignoring their stuff as I had years before in a casino coin-pail operation.
As the minutes went by, Bob’s and my amazement grew. We discussed the possibilities: police baiting bag thieves; a daring drug deal in which the suitcase contained cash or contraband; a frazzled traveler who’d shortly return for the forgotten thing, panting and train long gone. We kept our eyes on the bag.
A man came up to us and began a long tale in Italian. He was 60 or so, and looked like a grizzled businessman dressed in city-casual: a button-down shirt tucked into belted gabardines. He might have worn a sport coat, I’m not sure. We glanced at him and let him ramble as we kept watch on the suitcase, wondering what his scam was. His tone was moderate, a little confidential, a little urgent. He asked a question and from his baggy pants pocket pulled out an enormous wad of euros, bound by a thick rubber band. He switched to mostly unintelligible English, something about a bank, and persevered.
The suitcase was gone.
How? We’d been determined to see its resolution and barely looked at the interloper who’d accosted us. Had he come just to distract us? He’d certainly succeeded by flashing his money roll. We left him and rushed to the ticket machines, not twenty feet away, hoping to catch a glimpse of the bag, but it was gone without a trace.
We were angry and disappointed in ourselves. But not to despair: this was a good excuse for a consolation dinner. By accident, we found Ristorante Pizzeria da Francesco, and they had fresh porcini! Porcini will always perk me up, and Francesco served them the ultimate way: on thin, crisp pizza with a bit of mozzarella. No wonder the place was jammed with locals—well, anyway, the waiters didn’t kiss me.
Panama City, Panama—Bob asked one of our Panama police escorts what serious crimes against tourists had occurred recently. The officer stunned us with a horrific story of some visitors who had rented a car and driven to a lodge in a rainforest. They were ambushed somewhere out in the countryside and robbed of everything.
With disgust all over his face, the officer went on: the perpetrators, it was later discovered, were police officers. They had been tipped off by someone at the airport or car rental agency.
Two days later, we saw an English-language Panama paper:
Tourism Cops Busted For Torture
…members of the Tourism Police who arrested three men who are suspected of being part of a gang that robs tourists allegedly smashed the suspects’ fingers with a hammer, beat them with golf clubs and forced their heads into bags full of pepper gas in an attempt to make them reveal what happened to the proceeds of a string of robberies. According to a report, the crime was allegedly aggravated by the cops’ motive to make the suspects reveal where the money was so that they could take it for themselves. —The Panama News
We returned to Panama half a year later and, though it was already 9 p.m., made straight for the old, dilapidated, historic section of Panama City. We walked the dark and dangerous streets with our cameras dangling and very soon approached a few people loitering on a corner to ask for Angel or Jaime, the former thieves.
The loiterers whistled over an English-speaker: amazingly, it was Angel’s mother. She and one of the men, a private security guard, walked us to a gangster hangout, and there we spoke with about a dozen young thugs, Angel’s mother translating.
The boys sized us up quickly and automatically, and we did the same. I looked at their smooth skin, fake-tough faces, and posturing, and couldn’t prevent wistful thoughts of their youth and potential, or lack of potential. Bob did some goofy steals on the guys. One of them brandished a cellphone and fancy money-clip full of cash, claiming he’d just lifted them. Despite all their braggadocio, the gangsters clearly wanted a little old-fashioned fun. Like the thieves we speak to the world over, they blossom when spoken to with simple respect.
Eventually, a stoned-looking Angel arrived, with bloodshot eyes, no job, no vocation, and apparently still one of the gang. We wouldn’t be surprised if he was back to thieving. Jaime, on the other hand, was working with the Department of Tourism, we were told.
A pair of cops arrived on the scene and chastised us for clowning around with these criminals. We were not allowed to be in this area at this hour. There had been a murder right here five days ago. The cops pointed us out of the neighborhood and gave us a virtual kick in the butt along with the virtual spanking. Before we left the district, Angel’s mother brought us into her friend’s house. Angel followed and asked us for a gift of cash, which we gave him.
This is part 6 of 6. —— Part 1.
See our pickpocket summary page.
Panama City, Panama—Angel lives in the school building with his mother and assorted siblings. Aha! So that’s who’d done all the neat laundry hanging inside the school gate. Bob asked Angel to fetch his mother who, to our surprise, was not only willing to speak with a camera in her face, but did so in English. She used to work in a casino, which is how she learned English.
Angel was always different from his brothers, his mother explained. Eventually he stopped going to school, stayed out late, and didn’t listen to his mother. He’s changed a lot since he’s been in this program, she said. Now he’s good, he’s home every night, goes to bed early, and gets up early.
The audacious Bob Arno asked to see where she lives and where Angel sleeps. There’s no end to Bob’s impudence. He has no humility.
What thoughts of hope played in Angel’s mother’s mind as she led us to her “apartment?” Who are these impertinent snoops, she must have wondered, poking around here two days in a row, sometimes escorted by police chiefs, bodyguards, and interpreters? Foreign dignitaries? Potential benefactors? Deus ex machinas?
She shuffled to a wooden door and ordered Angel to get rid of the dogs yapping in front of a knee-high board. “I’m sorry. Be careful,” she said, pointing to the scrappy barrier.
“My wife will film it,” Bob said, manipulating me forward. I was mortified, ashamed by my violation of the poor woman’s privacy. But like the woman, I wasn’t given a choice, and it would have been more embarrassing to refuse. I couldn’t think how to stop on a dime after I’d been pushed down a slippery slope. I shouldered the offensive video camera and, with one eye on the viewfinder and the other watching my feet, stepped over the dogs at the door and the scrap of wood meant to keep them out of the room.
Angel’s mom showed me around, pointing out her possessions. She kept a running dialog, but I heard none of it, due to a blaring television, yapping dogs, and my extreme discomfort with this assignment.
Panama City, Panama—Bob and I had come to Panama as guests of the national and local police departments and the Panama National Hotel Association. The Central American country aspires to a boom in tourism and recognizes the need to curb street crime in its cities, tourist areas, and especially San Filipe, aka Casco Antigua, Panama City’s old town and a World Heritage Site.
Bringing in Bob Arno as a consultant to the tourism industry and trainer for police departments and security divisions was a major organizational feat involving numerous government agencies.
(The coup is entirely credited to the gentle, eloquent, and now retired Carlos Sanad of the Office of the Attorney General in Panama.) Bob and I were treated like dignitaries during our stay in Panama, hosted at the country’s newest, grandest resorts, provided with several translators, and always shadowed by bodyguards. We were transported in police vans but, in order to conduct our simultaneous research, often felt the necessity of ditching the navy-suited men talking into their wrists.
When we interviewed Angel and his pal Jaime, we left all badge-bearers outside. What would the gangsters tell us with police present? Perhaps that is why they felt free to demonstrate their pickpocketing techniques and speak of their criminal exploits. That, and Bob’s easy, simpatico demeanor. They showed their choreography with pride.
Bob was unimpressed with the boys’ talent. I was a bit more forgiving: presumably, they were rusty, being officially out of the business. Not to mention under great pressure with an audience of two foreign “filmmakers,” and cameras rolling.
Angel and Jaime claimed they didn’t exploit the credit cards they got in wallets, though they occasionally sold them to a fence. They received so little money for credit cards that they usually just threw them away. They wanted cash; the wallets they took usually contained $40-100, sometimes as much as $200. (Panama uses U.S. currency.)
Now that they’re out of the business, the boys miss the healthy takings they used to enjoy. They find it difficult to live on their legitimate incomes of two to three dollars a day, which they get from the government.
This is part 4 of 6. —— Next.  ——  Part 1
Panama City, Panama—As Bob and Angel spoke, a tall, handsome boy appeared dribbling a basketball. Soon he was part of our interview. His name was Jaime. He and Angel grew up together, were gangsters and pickpockets together, and were now together in the rehabilitation program.
As pickpockets, Angel and Jaime worked on buses as people got on and off them, at sports events, and at rock concerts.
Jaime took a crisp, clean Manila folder from under his arm, which he had brought along specifically to demonstrate how he used it—or something—to shield his handiwork. I was impressed that he had thought to bring a prop. Bob now addressed his questions to Jaime, whose alert demeanor was a welcome improvement over Angel’s empty, shifty eyes. Jaime was engaging, eager to answer, intelligent.
Their best method was the classic “sandwich,” in which one of them would drop keys or coins in front of a mark while the other nabbed his wallet from behind. They demonstrated using Bob as the victim. Then Jaime showed a close-up of his extraction technique. He gripped just a corner of the wallet and sort of zigzagged it up and out of the pocket. He smiled brightly, and I thought he’d make an excellent tour guide some day. Angel, if he’s lucky, might be suitable as a fry cook, or maybe a bell boy.
