Panama City, Panama—Too much laundry was hung too neatly on a wire line stretched across the broken schoolyard. This boy can’t be that industrious, I thought. There was cooked rice in a dog food bowl under a mango tree, and I heard a tv. Several tattooed toughs gave us a sideways glance. Were they former gangsters, too, or… gangsters? With a pole and bent hanger, they were trying to snag a mango from the tree in the center of the schoolyard.
Angel observes nervously as Bob readies his cameras.
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Angel kicked dust while Bob and I set up equipment among the ruins of the school. Countless skinny, mangy dogs wandered past. Angel had agreed to be interviewed on camera, but we were concerned that he’d have second thoughts. We tried to set up quickly. To use as a sofa, Bob dragged over the wooden frame of something long disintegrated. I sat down in the dusty earth and balanced a video camera on my knee.
Angel’s account of the pickpocket business was not too different from others of his plebeian level around the world. Basically, he practiced subsistence stealing, but his gang involvement added a vicious element. All Panamanian gang members carry guns, purportedly to protect themselves, despite the fact that if they get caught carrying a gun, they automatically get several years in prison. Regardless, they carry 9mm guns.
Eventually, Angel loosened up.
Angel lit a cigarette and showed us a recent bullet wound on his hand. He was shot by a rival gangster who didn’t know or believe that Angel had given up gang membership. He said it’s dangerous to live in this gangland without belonging, but admitted that it was equally dangerous to belong. He was covered with gang tats.
Angel was a gangster and pickpocket in Panama City who now claims to be former on both counts.
Panama City, Panama—Angel Sanchez is trying to stay clean. Neither crack nor speed produces the high he craves. At 23, Angel is trying to give up pickpocketing. A drug high is nothing, he says, compared to the rush of walking away with someone else’s money.
Angel’s pickpocketing is not the biggest concern of the Panama police, yet they invented a scheme to put him out of business. The program that attempts to rehabilitate local gang members provides vocational training as tour leaders. Gangsters are not invited into the program. They must seek it out and apply for admission. Gang leaders trained to be tour leaders!
Get rid of the gangsters and you get rid of crime.
San Filipe is a World Heritage Site. It's worse than run down, but restoration has begun.
Angel’s neighborhood, San Filipe, is gangland central. Residents loiter in drugged-out stupors, eyeing the few tourists that are starting to trickle in. The district is marketed as Casco Antigua, Panama City’s old town. Imagine trailing after a tour leader who holds aloft a 9mm gun instead of a yellow umbrella. (“…and on this corner, my three amigos killed a rival…”) That could be San Filipe in a year or so. Just be sure to follow the raised arm with the right tattoos.
Angel in front of the school with Bob and our interpreter.
Angel didn’t speak as he led us to the unused, dilapidated school he lived in as caretaker. Pulling out his important key ring, he unlocked the tall iron gate. His face was tight and he looked at the ground. Bob and I had a significant haul of still and video cameras with us. Hefting our bags, we slipped into the thieves’ den and let the iron gate slam shut, locking us in.
Bambi's hiding spot in St. Petersburg, beside and behind a freestanding slab of concrete.
Were you waiting with bated breath for the promised pictures of the Russian ice cream seller and the stolen credit cards she retrieved from her rubbish bin? Were you trying to picture the pee-stained concrete slab I hid behind while filming the Mongolian thieves in St. Petersburg? If yes to either, you’re in luck. In my few days at home between trips, I’ve grabbed a few frames from the video and posted them to the story Bolshoi Bandits: more pickpockets in Russia.
Over the years we minimized our equipment as we acquired smaller and smaller cameras of broadcast quality. With lighter equipment we became more maneuverable, better able to dash into subways, less reluctant to venture into deserted or potentially dangerous areas, and quicker on our feet. With hidden cameras and remote controls to operate them, we were later able to film con men like the bait-and-switch masters in Naples, and the pigeon poop duper in Barcelona. As we learned to recognize more sophisticated thieves, we were able to capture their deeds with more sophisticated devices.
We trekked through Florence as we did Rome. Wherever the tourists flock there, the urchins prey: all around the wedding-cake-like Duomo, outside the Ufizi, on and near the Ponte Vecchio, and at the outdoor markets. Women with children even operate inside the dimly-lit cathedrals, where tourists least expect them. The child-thieves can be shockingly aggressive, blocking a person’s progress while working busily under their cardboard shields. They’re so accustomed to visitors with video cameras, they repeatedly dug into our pockets while we shot them at point blank range.
At some point we began to carry a wallet stuffed with cut paper instead of money. That raggedy bait was stolen from our pockets by a hundred hands, with slow stealth, crude speed, cunning, or clumsiness. We almost always got it back just by asking. But we found the actual extraction of the wallet near impossible to film. The thieves got too close and covered their steals with a jacket, bag, or some other shield. We needed a creative solution.
After infinite ideas and frustrating failures, Bob had a brainstorm. He got an empty shoebox and filled it with sophisticated electronics. He fitted a pinhole lens onto one of his small cameras, and poked its miniature eye through the bottom of the shoebox. He made another hole for a tiny red diode which signified the camera’s record mode. Lastly, he connected a remote control to a short wire and let it protrude unobtrusively from the box, providing a means to start and stop the camera. With a brick-like battery and a tangle of wires completing the package, Bob’s ominous box would never make it through airport security.
I snapped a few rubber bands over the lid and Bob tucked the box neatly under his arm, lens pointing down toward his pocket. That’s how the shoebox-cam was invented.
Thus rigged, we’d created a space not easily blocked by a thief, a void full of light which preserved the camera’s view of Bob’s pocket. The shoebox-cam proved useful in many situations and became one of our favorite capturing devices along with the cellphone-cam, eyeglass-cam, and button-cam.
City of Hugs and Thugs. Naples, Italy— At the next stop, two more suspects pushed on beside me. The bus remained crowded all the way to the park before the tunnel, then loosened up a bit. All the thieves stayed aboard, determined, as a group, to get Bob’s wallet. The gray-haired man tried forever, then finally turned the job over to a colleague while he blocked and pinned Bob in a ridiculously obvious way. The tram was no longer crowded; there was no excuse for him to be so close!
None of them got it, though they tried hard. We all got off at Piazza Vittoria, the end of the line. Bob touched the gray-haired man’s shoulder and asked him to talk to us for a minute.
He tried to get away but Bob was insistent and started touching him all over and jabbering at him. A criminal crowd gathered, curious thieves, intrigued and protective of their members. I circled around them all with two cameras rolling as Bob stole the gray-hair’s cell phone, then his tie. It was perfect. He had no idea what was happening, no idea anything was gone. It was hilarious to see his confusion in the role of victim. Funny to Bob and me, and funnier still to the criminal crew.
The other pickpockets burst into laughter. After a moment’s delay, so did gray-hair. Then Bob stole his glasses and another guy’s watch. Great reactions.
That, as usual, broke the ice and established instant rapport. There were introductions all around, and a suggestion for coffee at a bar across the square. Tony, a happy, funny guy who had only two large rabbit teeth, was the most outgoing. It took us, and him, several minutes to realize we’d met before. We had coffee with him and his partner, Mario, in 2001. Tony now made a laughing phone call to Mario to tell him he was with us again.
Salvatore, the youngest, asked a lot of questions about us and what we do, and was eager to meet again. [We did meet again.] He gave us his cell phone number, and wanted to know when we’d be back. Like the others, he had missing and mostly rotten teeth. All of them seemed to love when we dropped the names of other local thieves we know. It must sort of prove that we’re okay. We talked shop as best we could with limited language. They all had a great time with us, it was obvious.
Tony showed us pictures of his wife and children. He showed us how his own wallet was wedged tightly sideways in his back pocket so it couldn’t be removed. Then he demonstrated the local specialty: removing money from a wallet without removing the wallet from the pocket. Very slick. Gray-haired Nuncio then showed how he uses his bag of newspaper to shield an inside-jacket-pocket steal (considered the most difficult).
The question remains: why did this gang of veteran thieves fail to get Bob’s wallet? Unfortunately, we couldn’t ask such a sophisticated question without an interpreter. But we’ll return, and we know where to find them. After eleven years of observing street thieves in Naples, we’ll do better interviewing now, than filming on trams.
We decided to go to the train station before the criminals took their siesta at two. Crossing Corso Garibaldi, we paused on the median strip at the tram stop. So many suspects and others we recognized stood around there, and a tram was just arriving. We couldn’t resist jumping on. It was the most crowded I’d ever been on. Thieves were everywhere, maybe 20 just around us at the back door. One, a North African, looked at Bob and said to his partner in English, “professional pickpocket.” They must have recognized us from previous visits. They got off the tram.
Bob and I didn’t look at each other, pretending we weren’t together. I kept my camera running, aimed at a small, dignified, gray-haired man in a sport coat and tie, who got close to Bob. He had neat hair, glasses, and carried a plastic bag containing newspapers as a tool for covering his dirty work. Why did I suspect him? It was more than just his tool; it was his shifty eyes, his maneuvering, and my intuition.
City of Hugs and Thugs. Naples, Italy— Bob and I estimate that we saw 50 to 60 pickpockets in two hours on the trams today. We recognized many from previous years, others are new acquaintances. We were treated to coffee three times. Bob’s wallet was stolen repeatedly, and he stole it right back each time.
The day began in the usual corner, where we saw a gang of thieves we recognized leaning against the wall. Mario was one of them. We said hello and spoke with him for a few minutes, then let him get back to work. Just then a crowded tram came along and all four pickpockets ran to catch it. They gave us a wave goodbye or a beckon to join them (I couldn’t tell which), and squeezed themselves onto the tram.
Since we were hoping to ride incognito, we waited for another tram one stop away. Lots of suspects collected around us, waiting: a short balding guy Bob thought was a boss, several North Africans, a large, portly guy, and others. As the tram approached, the big guy positioned himself behind Bob and I saw him try for Bob’s wallet, using his own shoulder bag for cover. As Bob went up the tram steps, I saw that he still had his wallet and the pocket was still buttoned. On the tram, the big guy got behind Bob and eventually took the wallet. Bob then handed me the cell phone camera (a wireless hidden camera, not a cell phone at all) and stole the cigarette pack from the thief’s shirt pocket. Then he leaned toward the big guy and said, “I’ll give you back your cigarettes if you give me back my wallet.”
City of Hugs and Thugs. Naples, Italy— Friday morning we had a friend take pictures of Bob and me getting onto crowded trams. A thief we’ve seen in years past appeared across the street. As a tram arrived, he crossed over and merged into the crowd, then positioned himself behind Bob. When we started to board, he took the prop wallet from Bob’s back pocket. We grabbed him and convinced him to talk with us for a few minutes.
He said his name was Angelo B. (sorry, can’t use real names). We had interviewed a Luciano B. in 1998, and have seen him many times since then. Angelo was Luciano’s brother. We had no common language, but enough to agree to meet back at that corner at 2:00, when Angelo could take a break from work. I didn’t believe Angelo would show up, but he did. We had an excellent interpreter with us.
Meanwhile, Angelo had met up with Mario, a thief we interviewed with his partner, Tony, in 2001. Mario told Angelo that we were okay to talk to.
There are four B. brothers, all are pickpockets. Angelo has four children, none are thieves; he won’t allow it. Luciano said the same about his in 1998. We had a lively conversation with Angelo for 20 minutes or so, and he told us we can find him working this area every day between 9 and 2. Then he goes home for lunch and a nap. He’s back working from 6 to 8. Later I realized why he and his colleagues come back in the evening. Just across the street is the ferry terminal, where daytrippers return from Capri, Ischia, and Sorrento. Many of these tourists take the tram from the ferry to the train station.
Bob stole a few things from Angelo while our friend snapped some pictures with my camera. We noticed that Angelo’s wallet was on a chain, and when he showed us his ID, we saw there was no money in his wallet. Bob suggested that he and I should visit Angelo in his home next time we visit Naples. I don’t intend to take that chance. Our interpreter also refused.
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.]
Turkey Vultures—We’re off duty in Istanbul, so we roam around the Grand Bazaar, buy a shawl, buy a cd, seize photo opportunities. We go out the back of the covered market and I can’t resist buying an ice cream cone and the show that goes with it. I’m delighted, even knowing each move before it happens. The ice cream cart has a row of deep bins, each holding a different flavor of the weird Turkish ice cream.*
In Istanbul, a sidewalk vendor works his pink ice cream.
To drum up business, the ice cream man bangs his three-foot-long spatula on the bins in a catchy rhythm. then he stabs the pink ice cream and raises it high out of its bin in a solid blob and lets it slowly stretch like pizza dough or silly putty. Turkish ice cream has a consistency completely unlike what we’re used to.
Layered with every flavor of chewy ice cream.
I ask for a small cone and the ice cream man goes into high-speed. He scrapes a bit of ice cream from each bin and creates a rainbow stack on the cone, layer by distinct layer. He hands the creation to me and I take the cone—and suddenly it’s just an empty cone in my hand. The laughing ice cream man holds my purchase over his head and makes a face. He takes the empty from me and offers the one I’m drooling for but as I reach for it, he lets it swivel upside down and I grab air.
The vendor has fun with customers, but no worry: the ice cream is thick and won't melt.
One more time he offers the cone, and this time I’m left with just the paper wrapper in my hand. As I finally chew my ice cream (yes, it’s chewable stuff), I watch a Canadian woman argue about the price of a cone. After grudgingly paying, she swears the man short-changed her.
Istanbul pickpockets
I cut Bob out of the photo, as it was the two thieves behind him I really wanted.
It’s 6 p.m. Just beyond the ice cream trolley is a major bus stop. Buses pull in and line up in three ever-changing lanes. Bob and I instantly notice a “suspect.” He’s wearing a navy pinstripe suit with a smear of caked mud(?) on the back of the left thigh, and he carries an odd shaped package loosely wrapped in a plastic bag—his tool.
"Pinstripe" works while "Teach," in the background, looks into our camera.
Soon enough we identify his buddies. I pretend to take a picture of of Bob while shooting two of the gang behind him. They’re not suspicious of us, and one (in the striped shirt) even steps up beside Bob and smiles at me, as if he wants to be in a picture. (I’ll call him Ham, but I should call him smug.) My damn camera is set on too high a resolution—I can’t snap a second shot because the first is still recording.
Now they perform for us, proving our fine-honed sense of thief detection. But we’re not ready with equipment! In fact, since we hadn’t planned to be on the prowl today, we don’t even have proper equipment. So Bob uses his new tiny camera in video mode, then promptly deletes the half-minute of footage by accident. I take a still shot, but a woman steps in front of the action and blocks the money-shot. We both get mediocre stills.
A pickpocket in Istanbul works passengers as they board the bus.
The pickpockets, of course, don’t get on the bus. Pinstripe hasn’t seen us, but another one has. He’s nice and clean-cut-looking, despite his three-day whiskers. He looks like a high-school history teacher. After blatantly photographing him, Bob approaches and offers his hand. We have no common language at all, but that doesn’t keep us from trying. We pull him aside and Bob lays some moves on him, borrowing his tool for cover. Teach breaks into a huge grin, but what does he think? That Bob is a pickpocket, or just that we caught him out, wink wink. He can’t know, and wants to get away, wants to get back to work. As if greeting a long lost confederate—or by way of desperate farewell—he kisses Bob roughly on both cheeks, then me, then Bob again, then me again. Bob is convinced it’s a sign of respect.
With no common language, Bob Arno's interrogation of this pickpocket in Istanbul did not go far.
Teach takes off, but Pinstripe doggedly continues, working the boarding passengers of one bus after another. All the thieves we observe here seem to work alone, even though they may be beside a colleague. During the 90 minutes we skulked about the bus stop, we observed about 20 suspects. Were there more?
The main drag in the "modern" part of Istanbul. Crowded day and night... but especially at night.
At 11 p.m. we wander up the hill to Istiklal Caddesi, the main drag in Beyoglu on the “modern side” of Istanbul. It’s still Europe, but on the other side of the Golden Horn. We talk about sitting down for a glass of wine or finding a sweet shop for some gooey Turkish desserts and tea. The street is jammed with pedestrians, and police cars are strategically parked at several intersections. I spot a suspicious character loitering around the atm, but Bob pooh-poohs my inkling. He pops into a deafening music shop to buy some new age Turkish funk while I, repelled by the volume, wait in the street and watch the people-parade.
The pickpocket we called "34," working in Istanbul at midnight.
By now it’s past midnight but despite being in r&r mode, my thiefometer kicks in. I can’t help staking out the lowlife who leans against the wall, clearly lurking, holding a sweater (tool) over his arm like half the other people on the street, but in that way.
Finally he lurches into the crowd and I see that (a), he’s got a limp, and (b), he’s onto a woman with a low purse. No surprise. I follow him until he gives up on the purse and leans against another wall. I dash into the cd store and pull Bob out. We easily locate the limper again, but soon lose him in the swirl of people. His shirt front identifies him as “34.” From the back he’s all gray, but his orange sleeve beckons like a beacon, and so does his bobbing head. Mostly though, this guy just leans and lies low. We watch him make a few more half-hearted attempts just to prove to ourselves that he is what we know he is, then Bob decides to enlist a translator.
A pickpocket in Istanbul, found working late at night.
He returns dragging a plainclothes security guard from the music shop.
Surprisingly, the limping pickpocket didn’t put up any resistance or hesitate to answer our questions. And although our translator required serious cajoling to enlist, he gets into the moment. “34” is a Kurd, not married, and has been picking pockets for 20 years. He claims to be the best operator on this street, and says it is his main territory. His leg was injured when he was a child. Bob notices how delicate his fingers are, how clean, how perfectly manicured the nails.
To demonstrate a move, Bob wants to borrow 34’s sweater to use as a cover. Like most criminal thieves, Bob simply can’t steal barehanded. At first, 34 was reluctant to release his sweater. But when Bob got into position behind the translator, 34 swiftly arranged himself in front of the translator and fell slightly back into him. Bob slipped out the translator’s wallet as if he and 34 had been partners for decades.
We ask how many others work this street, and 34 says there is a woman, and some children. This street is easy, he says. How often do you succeed in getting money, Bob asks. Every time, he lies. He repeatedly presses his hands to his nose, which is red and swollen. His cheeks are scraped and he might have the beginning of a black eye. Bob asks how he hurt his face. Three hours ago, he claims, he tried to break up a fight between some friends of his.
Yeah, right. We can think of a more likely scenario.
*Turkish ice cream is thick and chewy, totally different from “our” ice cream, but delicious. It’s thickened with salep, the dried powder of a wild orchid now endangered.
