NAPLES, ITALY, the week before christmas. At Osteria Tonino, a small family restaurant, we were seated with friends of the owner who recognized us from the film. After lunch, the five of us went to a coffee bar where Bob and I got luscious little pastries. The couple made fun of my tiny sips and bites, explaining that in Naples, people eat the pastry in one bite and down the coffee one gulp (which is especially tiny in Naples—always ristretto). When I turned back to the bar for my next sip of coffee, the cup was gone. Everyone laughed. You pick it up—put it down: done. The bartender made me another coffee when he was realized I hadn’t finished it.
The trattoria Nennella has been repeatedly recommended to us. In preparation for going to this restaurant in the infamous, dangerous Quartieri Spagnoli, Bob carries nothing. I remove even my wedding band. Looking at the wrinkled white finger-skin, I imagine getting mugged and, showing my ring finger, saying “hey, your competition already got me, even my wedding ring.” Only three blocks into the ancient quarter, the buzzing scooters are nerve-wracking. There’s a certain freedom in carrying nothing, but the pickpockets and muggers don’t know we have nothing. Or almost nothing; I have credit cards and a little cash in my pickpocket-proof underwear. [I know I appear to be over-cautious. It looks worse in print, and sounds ridiculous after-the-fact, when nothing has happened.]
But—it’s Sunday. Nennella is closed. A nearby group of people recommend La Pegnada, a few blocks away. It has no character but good food: penne alla sciciliana (con melanzane) and frito misto (squid and shrimps). Pulcinella is mounted high on the wall. Leaving the restaurant we bead directly for Via Toledo, the street that borders Quartieri Spagnoli and is comparatively safe. It’s mobbed with christmas shoppers, tangibly festive.
Between meetings, our goal is to find Angelo, a pickpocket we’ve known more than ten years. His phone number is no longer valid (of course), so we’ll try to find him through his brother, Luciano (whom we first met 14 years ago). Luciano, we know, retired from pickpocketing a few years ago. Both brothers were in our film. Angelo’s the one who wowed us with that beautiful, poetic line at the end: “Bob. You and I do the same thing. The difference is: you make people laugh; I make them cry.”
NAPLES, ITALY, the week before christmas. Everywhere we go, people recognize Bob from the film. They stop in cars in the street (1:30 a.m. last night it was the only way we managed to cross the busy street), pop out of shops, ask for photos, approach us in restaurants. We’re amazed!
This afternoon we’re to meet Michele, who was sound man on our film and, more importantly, translator extraordinaire. He’s from Naples but now lives in London, and he’s flown in to spend three days with us before christmas with his family. He’s also arranged a meeting for us with two filmmakers, one of whom wrote the screenplay for a renown crime film.
Still no luggage and I can’t continue to walk long distances fast in these heels. I buy some flat boots for the sake of speed and endurance on the rough stone streets. Later, I also succumb to a pair of frivolous shoes. Italy—what can I say.
We grab a late lunch before our 5:00 meeting with Michele. We haven’t seen him since the film shoot in September ’10, more than two years ago—but it’s like yesterday. He is sweet, smart, and always good company. As to working with a criminal element, he’s the best. The thieves like him. They trust him. I think he softens Bob’s prickliness, too. We catch up in the hotel lobby for a while before leaving for our appointment with Franco.
Michele has a car (parked miles away—thank goodness for the boots!) and drives us to Franco’s, where we’re to have dinner with his family. Franco was the main pickpocket in our NatGeo film, the thief we’ve been exchanging long emails with for two years. We went to his house for dinner a year and a half ago (with another translator).
Michele drives us in his family’s old rickety car. Even so, he’s concerned about leaving the unattractive car on Franco’s street, such is the neighborhood. Franco opens the heavy gate to his apartment complex and locks it behind us. I imagine all his neighbors feeling safe inside—locked in with a thief.
Franco had asked us not to talk business in front of his young children because they don’t know his job. He said we’d go out after dinner to talk thievery stuff. First, he shows off the apartment, which had undergone major remodeling since our last visit, much of which was done by Franco himself.
The apartment is almost unrecognizable. A long stone bar now divides the kitchen. (They call it the “American bar”—why? paid for from an American wallet?) There’s new built-in cabinetry, a wall closed where there had been a door, the door moved to the other side of the room, a closet turned into a passage, etc. It’s all beautifully done. The boys’ room is full of slick built-in furniture, bunk beds, desk, flat screen tv, computer, etc. It’s spotless, and the tan color-palette is calm and mature.
The living room flat screen tv is gigantic. They leave it on during our entire visit, even though the dining table is right in front of it. A wifi router blinks on a shelf. Franco builds large, complicated model ships. Two are on display in glass cases in the living room. I remember one of them being half-built last visit. Franco is good with his hands in more ways than one.
Bob and I are both dying to take photos but, out of politeness, we refrain. The family lives very well. They aspire to an upscale life. Franco must work hard to acquire such luxuries. Or maybe he just works the credit cards.
Eight Margherita pizzas are delivered for dinner. No silverware is offered. Bob and I follow suit when each member of the family folds the lid of his individual pizza box underneath. Michele can barely take a bite since he’s translating everything that’s said by everyone. After dinner, Franco brings out a giant album in a gorgeous leather box which documents his childrens’ recent first communion. The album is beautifully printed, like the ultimate Apple book. After we slowly go through it and admire every photo, he brings out another album-in-a-box. This one is his and his wife’s recent 25th anniversary church ceremony and party.
They’re a stable, upwardly-mobile, almost-ordinary middle-class family. All good-looking and likeable. It’s only Franco’s job that’s objectionable; but is it any worse than a cigarette company executive’s? There are many repugnant jobs, many of which must be held by likeable people. I can like Franco, but not his job. That’s proven.
Bob, Michele, and Franco disappear into a bedroom to talk. The wife has slipped away. I’m left with the children, who struggle to ask me questions using sign language, their limited English, and Italian, of which I speak none. Hopeless. Eventually I grab Bob’s MacBook Air, fire up Google Translate, and we suddenly have all the conversation we want. It’s excellent—though eerily silent.
It’s past midnight by the time we leave the house with Franco. We stand out in the street talking for another 45 minutes, scooters continuously buzzing close by. Michele only tells us later, on the way home, how nervous he was standing there, especially knowing Bob was loaded with computers and cameras hanging from his neck. On a deterrent-scale, neighborhood-resident Franco might not outweigh juicy-target Bob. Still, nothing happened.
Because traffic is crazy in Naples, even after 1 a.m., Michele drops us off in town about a mile from our hotel—against his better judgment, but on our insistence. Driving us to our hotel through choked streets would add another hour to his trip home. I’m nervous, of course, but Bob isn’t. We stand waiting to cross the wild traffic when a car stops and the men inside roll down the window and yell “Bob Arno, you are great!”
NAPLES, ITALY, the week before christmas. POURING rain. 3:30 p.m. and it’s already dark, with gushing rivers flowing through the streets. Our luggage didn’t arrive, so we wear the clothes we flew in. I’m in nice leather boots with heels. Not good for slogging through gushing torrents. Not good for broken up cobblestone streets and cracked pavement. We’re so happy back. Out we go.
We’ve come to explore the possibilities of a second film project, to meet with a renown screen writer, and—as in Pickpocket King—to find the elusive pickpocket Angelo.
Wading through town, we linger at a bus stop and discuss the pros and cons of being seen by thieves so early in our visit. Surely they’ll see us before we see them. We don’t know how they’ll react since the broadcast of our National Geographic documentary about them. The Italian version of the film is on YouTube with 140,000 views and almost 1,000 comments; 600 likes, 150 dislikes. How many times was the film broadcast on Italian tv? Do pickpockets look at YouTube? Are they proud of the film? embarrassed? angry?
We watch a few buses come and go, then plod through Piazza Municipio to another bus stop and stand in the dark, in the downpour under our hotel’s borrowed umbrellas (unmarked!), observing. We debate: would pickpockets be out in force targeting holiday shoppers? Or stay out of the rain? We loiter there in the dark, in the deluge, getting the feel of the city and just enjoying being back. The traffic is as wild as ever. The gutters are overflowing with wide, deep rivers, making it impossible to cross the street. I mourn my formerly-fancy aubergine-colored boots.
Next morning we get an email from Franco, the pickpocket in our film we’ve been communicating with these past two years. “So you’re in town! Clay [another pickpocket; not his real name] called me when he saw you in heavy rain in Piazza Municipio last night. I rushed down there but you were gone.”
Word spreads fast! If Clay knows we’re in town, and Franco knows, we can be pretty sure the whole criminal underworld knows. We don’t know their true reaction to the film, except that Franco is very unhappy that it’s up on Italian YouTube and is demanding we get it taken down. I can’t believe the thieves are concerned about being recognized—they’ve been doing what they do for decades. Everyone knows who they are and what they do. The film must have inspired a little pride—and some amount of jealousy.
My boots have dried up perfectly (with a lot of help from the hairdryer). We go out for a stroll, heading for the main train station—a very long walk. We pass through several pickpocket hot spots along the way, but we don’t dally. As we walk, a young man pops out of a shoe store: “Hey! I know you—you’re the guy in the pickpocket film!” In Italian, of course. Bob waves and we keep walking. Later, passing again, we let the man take some pictures of Bob. Strange that Bob would be recognized out of context like that. The film called him an American—there’s no reason he should be noticed at a distance.
Close to the train station the action picks up. We approach a sidewalk three-shell game. The players refuse to speak to Bob—unless he pays them. We walk another block and an iPad is quietly offered for sale. We let the seller give us a complete demo and all the specs. Bob explains he knows all the “pacco man” bait-and-switch tricks and just wants a demonstration of the switch. The thief’s not ready to admit anything, until—Franco zooms up on his scooter and greets Bob and me with hugs and kisses. Franco the pickpocket—his warm greeting instantly gives us street-cred. The pacco man goes boggle-eyed.
Sharif spat a mouthful of blood as he laid his right arm across a wide tree stump. He had chewed the inside of his cheeks to shreds in the days since he’d been caught picking pockets in the Grand Mosque at Mecca. As an Egyptian man in Saudi Arabia, he was not entitled to extradition for his crime. He was to be punished swiftly and in public.
Meanwhile, in Spain, Kharem dusted himself off after a police beating, gave a fleeting wistful thought to the cash he surrendered, and went back to work.
“I never hear of pickpockets,” said Dina, an Egyptian woman who works as a tour guide with Abercrombie & Kent in Cairo. “I have never had a tourist in my charge complain of theft. Neither have my colleagues. If someone were to try to steal, the people around would beat him black and blue. They would knock him down and kick him, even burn his fingertips. It just does not happen here. Cairo is such a crowded city, we must live like brothers and sisters.”
Contrast Egypt with Italy, where there are just too many thieves for the police to deal with. Without exception, every police officer we interviewed throughout Italy (and much of Europe), threw up his hands and blew a jetstream of air at our first mention of pickpockets.
And while each officer showed a thorough knowledge of the perpetrators and their methods, we found a serious lack of record-keeping. No information is shared among countries, among agencies, even among stations in a single city. In fact, most officers do not even have computers into which to feed the data.
In Venice, the Municipale Police told us they are only interested in Venice, not in Italy or Europe. Because they never see the actual crime, the squad can’t arrest or jail; they “just open the door to the next city” so the problem becomes someone else’s.
Still, what’s the value of numbers, patterns, and percentages? Italy’s laws work against pickpocket police, and this is typical across Europe. Almost every European official we interviewed (with the notable exceptions of those in Naples and St. Petersburg) blamed the preponderance of pickpocketing and bag-snatching on illegal immigrants. But the countries simply cannot get rid of their illegal aliens.
In Italy, the first problem is administrative. When immigrants are caught without papers, they are politely given 15 days to pack up and leave the country. They are released. And that’s the end of it. The immigrants just do not leave. They do not choose to return to the hellholes from which they came.
Secondly, many of the foreigners have no passports or identification. And without documentation, the north African countries from which many of these people come refuse to accept their repatriation. We cannot expect to see a reduction in street crime thanks to law enforcement without the laws to back them. Their hands are tied.
In Egypt, where people live “like brothers and sisters,” Cairenes live side by side in rivalry and harmony; even men stroll arm in arm, holding hands. Across Egypt, a quasi-vigilantism controls low-level crimes. Misdemeanors and serious offenses are dealt with according to criminal code.
Egypt’s judicial system is based on British and Italian models, but modified to suit the country’s Islamic heritage and influenced by its ancient laws. Most of Egypt’s laws are consistent with or at least derived from Islamic law, the sharia.
If Egyptian pickpocket Sharif Ali Ibrahim had committed his crime in Egypt and had been caught by alert citizens, he would have been severely beaten. If he’d been caught by the police, he’d serve a significant prison term. And if he’d been found guilty of stealing from one of Egypt’s precious tourists, his sentence would have been trebled.
But Sharif committed his crime in Saudi Arabia, in fact at Islam’s holiest place. He had picked the pockets of worshippers praying in the Grand Mosque at Mecca. Therefore, following strict Islamic sharia, Sharif Ali Ibrahim’s right hand was chopped off with a sword, in public.
Florin and his 13-year-old pal emphasize that they are not pickpockets—they are phone thieves. They steal phones from tabletops, not from people. The distinction may be moot if you were the owner of a phone stolen by Florin & Friend.
Even with a monstrous TV camera aimed at them inches away, the boys spoke openly about their work. Florin even donned a fluffy microphone. As the team’s elder at about 20, he was its tongue-tied spokesman, frustrated by foreign language difficulties. He and the kid spoke Romanian, the kid and Bob spoke in rudimentary French.
We found them on La Rambla again, one month after our first conversation with them. Look closely at their photos. Do these children look suspicious? Would you be concerned about their nearness to you? If you don’t recognize the silent languages of thieves, you’d find them disarming.
Message to readers: Do not leave your smartphone on cafe tables, even while you’re sitting right there.
We’d first spotted Florin, the kid, and another youngster outside a cafe in Barcelona in July. Quick on the draw, I caught them on video as they attempted to steal iPhones from cafe tables, right under the noses of the phone-owners. I’ve already described how Florin & Friends steal smartphones. Like magicians, they practice a refined version of the Postcard Trick.
Returning to Barcelona with a German TV crew (from RTL Punkt 12) in August, we found the boys still at large and at work (no surprise). Having watched Bob Arno on YouTube in the interim, they agreed readily to speak on television. They’re at ease on camera, even eager; yet… naive, as if unaware they’ll be broadcast across the land. Florin ignored the camera, while the kid looked right into it like a professional PR rep pitching viable career options. They showed no discomfort; they did not mug for the camera. Pretty much, they ignored it. Question: How could we fail to ask why they admitted to being thieves on TV.
Florin the phone thief
“I am not pickpocket.” Florin stressed that he doesn’t know a thing about pickpocketing, only about stealing phones from tables. We believed him.
Unfolding paper notes from their back pockets, both boys demonstrated a variety of finger techniques for the under-the-cover grip. Unlike most other thieves we’ve interviewed, neither of these was the slightest concerned about demonstrating thievery moves in public. Must be their youth and inexperience. Perhaps they haven’t yet been in jail. Question: why did we fail to ask if they’d ever been arrested or jailed?
The kids were unhurried and, although they did not appear to be nervous, both were childishly fidgety. Florin frequently scrubbed his face with his palms in frustration, partly understanding our questions in English but unable to respond without his pal’s French translations.
The youngster, all pimply and peachfuzz, lifted his shirt to air his flat belly, his hands flittering around his middle. I take this handsome dusky boy with his sweet smile as a Roma; but not Florin. We don’t often see mixed gangs. Question: why didn’t we ask?
Bob Arno:How many phones do you steal in a day?
Florin: Maybe two, three, four. Sometimes five, sometimes none.
BA: Where do you sell them? Do you have a fence?
F: No, I sell directly to buyers.
BA: What do you get for a phone?
F: 100 to 300 euros, depending on the model. Average €200, older ones €100.
BA: How long have you been in Barcelona?
F: Only six months, but I’ve been in Spain for five years.
BA: Do you think you might try working in France or Germany?
F: Not France, because other groups are already in control there. Not Germany, the police there are too tough. We are afraid of the German police. The police here are no problem.
BA: How many people in Barcelona are expert at this method of stealing phones from tables?
F: One thousand. [The two boys concur.]
BA: How many are from Romania?
F: About one hundred who steal, not just phones from tables. Pickpockets, too.
Despite the midsummer heat, the boys hung on each others shoulders. The affectionate child kept a hand on Florin’s shoulder whenever possible, habitually rubbing his own stomach in an unconscious manner, as if petting a puppy.
So many unanswered (unasked) questions! The impromptu interview is rarely perfect. Complicated by a multitude of factors, we’re usually content, if not triumphant, with what we get. We deal with criminals in our line of work: skittish, cagey, angry, fearful—we never know. To enable any conversation at all, we must firstly make our subjects comfortable. There is tension: while they suss us out, while we figure out our best tactic. One wrong move, one wrong question, and the subject walks. Like Zelig, we tailor our temper and pick a posture commensurate with our quarry. Later we regret, then accept our omissions.
Florin & Friend
At the end of the long interview and exchange of demonstrations, after handshakes and multilingual goodbyes, the boys crossed into the center of La Rambla. With the camera zooming to follow them from a distance, the young crooks disappeared into the unsuspecting tourist crowd. Our kind of thiefhunting means you catch ’em, and you throw ’em back in.
How a pickpocket steals from a jacket hung on the back of a restaurant chair.
A strategist thief is one who creates his own opportunity, one who operates on a specific plan, one who steals with malice aforethought. The lowest strata of these are not much more than glorified opportunists. To me, though (and these are my definitions), an opportunist with a clever enough scheme gets a strategist rating.
Take Yacine, a north African illegal immigrant thief who works in Athens, Greece.
“I have a favorite technique to use in restaurants,” he told us, “but it only works in winter, when men hang their jackets on the backs of their chairs. I could show you, but I don’t have a jacket, and you don’t have a jacket. No one has a jacket in Athens in the summer.” He hunched his shoulders, raised his palms.
“We’ll go buy one,” Bob Arno said, and we had Yacine lead us to a men’s shop. There followed a hilarious scene in which a pickpocket selects a sport coat based on an analysis of its array of pockets. When a suitable jacket was purchased, Yacine chose a quiet café for our demonstration. Two of his colleagues joined us for lunch first, during which a cell phone rang.
Harik, 28, illegally visiting from Albania, pulled a phone out of his pocket and put it on the table. Then another, and another. He had half a dozen cell phones on the table before he found the ringing one. It had been a lucrative morning for Harik. He opened the back of the phone and pulled out its SIM card. The ringing stopped. Harik tore the tiny chip into shreds.
(An aside: want to buy a cell phone in Athens? Hundreds of men stand packed in a pedestrian shopping lane in the Plaka area, each displaying a phone or two. If you show interest in a man’s wares, he’ll pull from his pockets his other offerings, up to a dozen phones.)
“The new jacket is yours, but I need a jacket also, for this method,” Yacine said as he set the scene. “I’ll use a shirt for the demonstration.”
Pickpocket steals from jacket on cafe chair
He arranged Bob and me in bentwood chairs at a café table and ordered Greek coffee for us. He settled himself at the next table. Then, back to back with Bob, hand behind his back but hidden between the jackets, he snagged the wallet. I was facing him and saw nothing suspicious.
“You be the victim, Bob. Here’s the jacket. Put some euros in your wallet, empty is no good. Now put it in the new jacket. I don’t care which pocket! That is never something I decide. Now hang the jacket on the back of your chair. Perfect. Now, please. Have a seat. Drink your coffee.
“I will take the seat behind you so we are back to back. I have this shirt in my backpack, which I can use to simulate a jacket. I’ll hang it on the back of my chair. Now Bob, here is the secret: I will readjust the chairs so they are not exactly back to back. I’ll slide mine a little left or a little right. It doesn’t matter which way.
“Look now. I’m sitting right behind you. Our jackets are back to back on our chairs. I just slip my hand behind me and into your jacket. I don’t turn around. I can feel the pockets and quickly remove the wallet. See?
Cash is stolen from a wallet in a jacket pocket, without removing the wallet.
“You think that’s good? Thank you. Put the wallet back and I’ll show you something better. This is my best take. I will get the money only. I will not take the wallet. Just the money from it. It’s the same technique, but it takes a few seconds longer. Look now, I’ve got it!
“When I do this, the man never even knows. He thinks he spent the money somewhere. Very good, no?”
Yacine is an opportunist because he needs a fool for a mark, someone who’s left himself open. But he works with a strategy that gives him an advantage over the ordinary opportunist, so he has a wider field of potential victims. He’s more dangerous than his lesser fellows because he succeeds within the perceived shelter of upscale commercial establishments. He also has grander conceits. Yacine’s ultimate goal is America.
Bob and I have done this repeatedly for 15 years, always with more butterflies and apprehension than confidence. We haven’t let a tv crew down yet (but it’s bound to happen). So, with crew in tow, we resumed our research in Barcelona.
First, since many of the stolen smartphones are Apple iPhones, I visited the brand new Apple Store on Placa Catalunya, presuming that some victims would visit in the hope of retrieving their phones’ serial numbers. I was correct, store manager Mario told me, but “only a few per day. And no, Apple won’t help them obtain their serial numbers.” (You’d have to get to the computer with which you sync the phone, open iTunes, go to Preferences, choose the Devices tab, then hover your curser over the name of the device to see a popup that shows its serial number.)
Apple store, Barcelona
Next I returned to the police station to ask, are you serious? Really, if my phone is stolen, I can’t file a police report without its serial number? The officer on duty tried deflecting my question: “Do you have insurance?” he asked to each of my questions. I persisted until he confirmed: no serial number, no police report. Yes, you can go home and call in the serial number, but the police will not provide a copy of the police report by mail, fax, or email. What good is that?*
While at the police station, I couldn’t resist questioning the line of visitors waiting to report their thefts. iPhone stolen, iPhone stolen, iPhone stolen, etc., and two morose groups reporting that their accommodations had been burglarized. (One, a group of six Latvian students who lost multiple laptops, phones, and iPods, were devastated because as students, they couldn’t afford to replace them.) The victims kept coming and I couldn’t help but notice that the police station welcome mat was, literally, worn out. Pathetic.
One more question, Officer: this refusal to file a report without the phone’s serial number—is it just in Barcelona, or all of Spain? “All of Spain!” the officer assured me.
Barcelona police station entrance, where the welcome mat is literally worn out.
Next, with the RTL tv crew rolling, we traipsed through the Barrio Gotico and Born areas of Barcelona after midnight, swinging a fake iPad. I was terrified for Bob, the carrier and potential victim, due to the reports of violent snatching we’ve recently been hearing. Yet… no takers! We rested and gathered strength on gorgeous tapas and beer, setting out again through the dark lanes and creepy alleys, my brave husband willing to get mugged for television (not for the first time!).
Perhaps we were too large a group (five). Maybe we were just in the right place at the wrong time. Maybe thievery is closed on Monday nights.
Next day, we sat for hours at Cava La Universal, where we’d seen and filmed the clever smartphone thieves. We had a brilliant fake iPhone laid out temptingly on the table—like fresh bait still wriggling.
Immediately the waiter approached and pushed the phone closer to us on the table. “Don’t have it like that,” he warned, “the thieves will get it. They’re very, very fast. They’re very, very good!” We pushed it halfway back and gave him a wink.
Fake iPhone on our cafe table
The tv producer and I chatted and people-watched over coffee while I scrutinized humanity. I saw a few “suspects,” pointing them out to the producer. “Look at those two.” I pointed to “white-shoulders” and a pal as they walked away on La Rambla. They hadn’t come close to us. “Thieves, for sure,” I boldly pronounced. The tv producer believed me without evidence. Or maybe she didn’t.
An hour later Bob came to meet us at the cafe with the other producer and the cameraman. Guess who they had with them? “White shoulders” and his pal. And guess who they were? White-shoulders’ pal was the very phone-thief gang-leader I filmed one month ago! (Tattooed “Born to kill.”) This time, his partner, white-shoulders, was only 13 years old. I hadn’t recognized Born-to-kill as he passed by an hour before. I had only pegged him as a probably thief based on his and his partner’s body language and behavior.
Phone thieves with Bob Arno
Born-to-kill was in good spirits and willing to talk. Even on camera! He said he hadn’t tried to steal my iPhone because it looked fake. Liar! It looks damn real—in fact its case is real, but has a printed display. And anyway, he’d never came close enough to my table to see the iPhone. He and the child had passed at a distance. Born-to-kill’s name is Florin.
More in on this very soon.
*The benefit of filing a police report is that the theft is officially documented (supposedly), helping to show the government and the public the extent of the problem.
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.
Smartphone theft is out of control. Phones are flying off cafe tables right under the noses of their owners. The thieves are nonchalant and diabolical, and I’m going to show you how the steal is done. The perps we just filmed practiced a refined version of the pickpocket’s postcard trick. For cover, they used just a flimsy sheet of paper with an illegible scrawl on it—and they did it one-handed.
Cava La Universal
Bob and I had paused for coffee at a Barcelona cafe. We had just left the Norwegian victims at the police station, along with all the other stolen-iPhone and other smartphone theft victims who wouldn’t be allowed to file a police report. Revived, we paid and got up to leave.
Bob immediately spotted three boys hovering on the perimeter of the cafe. They did not have any pickpocket’s “tools,” like a jacket, cardboard sheet, newspaper, messenger bag, or even a hat. It’s hard to say what made us suspect these boys out of the hundreds of people in the vicinity. We had not been observing them. We simply saw them as suspects immediately. Just experience, I guess.
Danger! Do not leave your smart phone on a cafe table.
Bob spotted them and said “my nine o’clock.” I looked to his left just as they sprang into action. I got my video running in the nick of time. Two of the boys headed for the cafe, each extracting a sheet of paper from under their shirts as they walked. I focused on one of the boys and got right behind him, camera extended blatantly.
He walked up to a table where a tourist couple was relaxing with drinks and, with his left hand only, held his piece of paper over the iPhone sitting in front of them. I could see his fingers under the paper trying to grasp the phone. So did the smartphone theft almost-victim—or rather, he noticed the phone move a bit. He heard it, too, as one end was briefly lifted and slipped back onto the table. He reached for it. The young pickpocket, unperturbed, moved to another table as if to try again, but then reversed and left the cafe.
The young pickpocket tries to nab the phone one-handed under his paper. (Frame grab from video.)
How is it possible to hold a piece of paper with one hand and sneakily snag a phone (or a wallet) with the same hand? We didn’t get it until we watched our video later.
The video also showed that the oldest boy, about 20 with unshaven peach fuzz, had sent in the two youngsters, who worked on adjacent tables almost simultaneously. Both failed in this instance.
Both thieves have just tried and failed to steal iPhones at adjacent cafe tables.
The boys left the cafe and rejoined their friend. As they sauntered away, we were right there with them, demanding they speak with us. In a combination of French and English, they told us they’re Romanian. The two younger boys, pimply and beardless, were 14-16. The youngest-looking claimed to be 15. The oldest of the three, clearly the “controller” of the gang, was pierced and tattooed, the inside of his left wrist proclaiming “Born to kill.”
Surprisingly, the killer provided his email address and posed for a photo with the youngster. The other boy backed away from the pose.
Bob Arno in Barcelona with two of the three “table-top boys.”
We left the three boys and went back to the cafe. The smartphone theft almost-victims were still there, still relaxed, as if they were almost ripped off every day. Bob and I introduced ourselves and asked them what they’d seen. They had focused on the note, “something about money and eat,” the Belgian man said, “and he kept pointing to the word gracias.”
Aha! The almost-victims had seen something subtle which we couldn’t see from behind—a gesture so casually performed they hadn’t thought anything of it. What they described was a trick worthy of a world-class magician. Masterful misdirection.
Bob and I are impressed by the devilish simplicity of the one-handed technique. Although we watched the boys fail, with practice these teenagers will turn a blithe deception into a powerful thievery tool.
Dear Readers: do not leave your valuables on cafe table tops! Now you see it—now you don’t. These thieves are magicians.
The sunburned almost-victims tell us how they they thwarted the theft of their iPhone.
I have over fifty years’ experience watching magicians, mentalists, con artists, thieves, and financial criminals executing their ruses to fool, bamboozle, or divert attention from reality. Yes, I’m blasé when it comes to deceptive moves, be they performed by skillful politicians or close-up magicians at the Magic Castle.
But occasionally even I get taken in. In the case of the one-handed smartphone theft in Barcelona, which must be attempted hundreds of times a day, I could not immediately figure out the exact moves of the young Romanian pickpocket (whom we filmed in action), even though I replayed the video of his attempt over and over. Granted, the seven seconds of footage was from behind and wide-angle, and all the finer details were lost. It infuriated me that I couldn’t see or figure out the “tipping point” of the exercise.
Even replaying the interview with the mark didn’t shed light on the dexterity of the thieves, or their technique, until I played close attention to a small detail of the mark’s re-enactment of the thief’s approach, and the positions of his hands. It suddenly hit me—WOW—how simple; and yet how effective. And how absolutely insignificant the gesture would be to any victim sitting at a table sipping coffee with a smartphone (or wallet) on the table.
Yet, without that two-second move, the one-handed steal could never be perfected. These young, unsophisticated thieves, through practice, have accomplished a sort of fluid elegance that they repeat day after day, hour in hour out. It wreaks havoc on the celebrated Barcelona charm visitors experience as they people-watch over a drink or a coffee on La Rambla.
And no, we will not reveal the actual move! It would spread among all thieves who read our stories like weeds in a strawberry patch.
Barcelona police are turning away theft victims who come to report the theft of their phones. Why? The victims can’t provide the stolen phones’ serial numbers (duh). In three minutes, we saw three separate victims of theft prohibited from filing official police reports.
I wish we’d surveyed the rest of the victims waiting in line. Doubtless some lost wallets full of cash, but smart phones are the hot item for thieves this year, and Barcelona Police aren’t going to let them inflate their theft statistics.
The more I dwell on this, the madder I get. These are a subset of victims, already upset, who bother to make the trek to the remote police station to file official reports. They need these reports for their insurance claims. But they don’t have access to records of their electronic devices’ serial numbers while on holiday and Barcelona Police know it.
Now, with a brand new Apple store having just opened last week, stolen-iPhone victims might be in a bit of luck if Apple will provide the information the police require. If those victims have time to go across town to the Apple store, wait for employees to access their account histories, then return to the police station. Nice vacation!
When police make it impossible to file an official theft report, they tamper with statistics. The motivation is clear: what city doesn’t want lower crime stats? What city doesn’t want to show the effectiveness of its police department?
And what city desperately needs to show lower pickpocketing statistics than Barcelona? I get it.
Three stolen-iPhone victims in three minutes. Let’s extrapolate on the conservative side and say three in ten minutes. That’s 18 an hour, or what, 200 a day? More? Fewer? Impossible to say but “a lot” would be accurate. Police translators are only on duty ten hours a day, if I remember correctly, so reports from foreigners would be concentrated during those hours. I believe 200 smart-phone theft victims showing up each day at the Mossos d’Esquadra (Barcelona’s Catalan police station) is conservative. That’s 200 reports of theft not filed. Per day.
I didn’t consider this possibility when I wrote 6,000 Thefts Per Day on Barcelona Visitors. Granted, smart phones weren’t the hot target they are today. But I knew that Barcelona Police had other methods to thwart the filing of theft reports: limited hours of available translators; bouncing victims from one police station to another, demanding they come back in a few hours… Still, numbers in the hundreds of thousands are admitted by Barcelona Police as reports successfully filed by pickpocket and bag snatch victims.
We know we can’t trust those numbers. The police admit to 9,000 violent muggings in the first ten months of 2011. That’s 30 per day. And 2,000 bag-snatches in the same period—6 per day. But how many pickpocketings? How many other thefts? And how many people bother or try to file police reports? And of those, how many succeed?
I know—I’ve got far more questions than answers. I will revisit the police station in a few weeks and report back.
