I met the elderly British victim moments after her bag was stolen. She’d been sitting on the beach in Alicante, Spain, eating potato chips. Her bag was right beside her. She lowered her head for a moment, just long enough to stare at her watch—she can’t see a thing without her glasses, which were in her bag. In that moment, her bag was taken.
It was 2 p.m. on her last day in Spain.
As I walked the woman to her hotel spa where she hoped to find her husband, she tried in vain to keep the tears from flowing. She was in a panic about her glasses and getting through airports without them. I had to brief the husband, because by then the woman had lost her composure.
A policeman had written down the address where the woman could go to file a report. Do you think she’ll get in a cab and go? No, I don’t either. If anything, she’ll find a quickie glasses shop and get some distance lenses that will see her safely home. She won’t get the bifocals like those she lost, though.
The cop said he’d guess there are about five reports a day of beach bag theft. We know the elderly Brit who can’t see isn’t going to file a report. What about the twenty-something with her boyfriend? The two guys on the prowl? The cruise ship passenger who has to be back onboard at 4:00? How many will file police reports?
The beach-shack soda-seller thought he’d recognize five or six of the area’s regular bag thieves. Are there more? How many bags does each steal in a day?
The cop defined the technique as he understands it. The perp targets a bag and creeps close with his towel or blanket. He waits for the bag’s owner to move away. He covers the bag with his towel or blanket and makes off with the hidden treasure.
Not rocket surgery.
Not the only way, either. Look at our poor British victim. She didn’t leave. She didn’t nap. She just looked away.
Bags. Like wallets and smartphones, they have legs.
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.
Bob and I visited the Barcelona police station for information and found the usual line of victims reporting thefts. I asked a young Norwegian couple what had happened to them.
They’d been outside Los Caracoles, a popular restaurant, after dinner (and yes, drinks). He had held up his iPhone and taken a few photos.
“They must have targeted me,” the man said, “because as soon as I put my phone in my pocket, a guy bumped into me. The phone was gone in one second and so was the thief.”
“From those tight jeans?” I asked him.
“Yes, from this front pocket.”
“And the iPhone had a rubbery case. It doesn’t slide easily,” his wife/girlfriend said. “The phone will be erased after ten wrong passwords are entered, so I’m not worried about the information on it. I’m most upset about losing the photos of our whole trip.”
The victims at the Barcelona police station.
Pretty typical, so far. But here’s what amazed me (and I was right there!). The Barcelona police officer behind the counter refused to take the victims’ report! That’s right—refused to file a report! Because the victims could not provide the serial number of the stolen iPhone, they were turned away. The phone was stolen! Who carries around a note with serial numbers?
In a non-ridiculous world, the Barcelona cop would have said “I’ll take your report, but you’ll have to call in or email your serial number before I file it.”
Or perhaps, “I can’t file a report without your serial number, but you can file one online here once you obtain it.” Did the Barcelona policeman tell the polite victims that it was even possible to report theft online? No, he did not. I told the victims and provided the link. (More ridiculousness: victims who file online must still visit a Barcelona police station within 72 hours of filing in order to sign the report. So if it’s your last day, like the Norwegians, you’re cooked.)
Los Caracoles
[5/15/17 edit: In the comments below, Jon pointed out that for a stolen iPhone, “you can log onto http://appleid.apple.com, where you can view all devices linked to your Apple account as well as their IMEI and serial numbers.” Great suggestion, though this only works for devices that are logged into your Apple account.]
Next in line at the police station was a woman whose iPhone was stolen off a cafe table. The technique was an improvement on The Pickpocket’s Postcard Trick about which, coincidentally, I just posted. She was at her hotel’s restaurant, using the hotel’s wifi. She, too, was unceremoniously turned away from filing a police report because she did not have her phone’s serial number.
Strangely enough, we watched a few thieves attempt this technique just a few hours later. We were just leaving after a rest and coffee at a cafe on La Rambla. Bob spotted the thieves moments before they struck. I filmed them. They will be my next post.
Another couple I surveyed in the police station: stolen iPhone. As predicted in Summer Scams to Avoid, smart phones are the target of choice this summer. (Not that a wallet is out of danger.)
mossos d’esquadra
Three facts that surprise a pair of veteran thiefhunters:
1. A pickpocket stole from the tight front pocket of a man’s jeans (I saw the jeans).
Kharem is another opportunist who doubles as a minor-league strategist. When we first met him, he was prowling the perimeter of a breakdance performance near the top of La Rambla. He carried a black plastic bag to cover his hand as he unzipped the duffel-bags of spectators.
“My job is pickpocket. I have this job seventeen years,” he said in English, over coffee in a little restaurant, then launched into French, telling us that he worked in Paris for twelve years until he was expelled from France. He left a little girl there.
Postcards are offered as if for sale to distracted diners. They’re briefly held over a wallet, cell phone, or camera.
Kharem raised the plastic bag from his lap and put it on the table. He had a “unique technique,” he explained, his own method, something he invented and believes he is alone in using. He opened his plastic bag to show a handful of Barcelona postcards. He fanned the postcards and extended them to me across the table, as if offering them for sale. Then he withdrew them, leaned back in his chair with satisfaction, and tipped up the cards. Beneath them, he’d swiped my empty coffee cup.
He does this on La Rambla, Kharem told us with pride, where he approaches diners at outdoor cafés. When he removes the fan of postcards, he takes a wallet or camera with it.
Apparently, Kharem doesn’t realize that this is a fairly common technique used in internet cafés. Websurfers, intent on their email or gaming, often set a wallet, credit card, or cellphone on the desk in front of them, beside the keyboard. Perhaps Kharem did invent the postcard trick, but he’s not alone in using it. This “unique technique” vanishes so many valuables from right under noses that many internet cafés flash warnings on screen.
The postcards are pulled away along with the wallet.
That’s how Jennifer Faust, of Canada, lost her wallet. She had it next to her keyboard at Easy Everything internet point on La Rambla. Jennifer, though, had filled out our Theft First Aid form, and therefore easily canceled her credit card accounts. Still, in the hour that passed while she fetched her Theft First Aid sheet, about $100 had been charged to one of her cards. This particular internet point, now called Easy Internet, has over 350 terminals in long rows, and the facility is open to anyone who cares to wander in. On our visits there, we spotted several teams, at different times, carrying packs of dog-eared postcards.
“I, too, was a victim of Barcelona street scams…” said more than a hundred people. And they described their own thieves, con artists, fake beggars, purse snatchers, scammers, fraudsters, pickpockets, and thugs. The page, Barcelona Scams, is riveting reading!
My great friend Terry Jones has just packed up his Barcelona life after 15 years of loving life in that great city. While he’s moved on to exciting challenges—he’s starting up FluidInfo—everything he’s acquired in Barcelona had to go. Along with about 3,000 books, he parted with his collection of Barcelona street scams. He gave them to me.
We met though thiefhunting about ten years ago. Terry describes the odd convergence of our ancestral histories here. While Bob and I go looking for thieves, Terry doesn’t make any special effort as a thiefhunter. He’s simply observant. He sees scams and cons all around him (and you).
Barcelona Street Scams
Have you been to Barcelona? Were you pickpocketed or hustled out of money? Tricked, conned, or scammed? If so, did you report it to the police? (I’m asking for survey purposes.) Take a look at Barcelona Street Scams. Add your own Barcelona street scams to this page. Just scroll down to the comment section below. And please do mention whether or not you bothered with a police report. And if so, how you were treated by the police.
Thank you for sharing your Barcelona street scams!
La Rambla, Barcelona—On observing the behavior of someone like Plaid, we label him a suspect. We follow and film, yet we can’t be certain he’s a thief.
“He could be a pervert,” police have told us. “Watch his eyes.” Plaid’s eyes said wallet. His furtive fingers opening buttons said pickpocket. We stayed glued to his back until he gave up.
“Let’s go talk to him.” Bob was already trotting toward him. I had to run to catch up.
“Scuza,” Bob called, “por favor…” He was mixing up his languages in the excitement.
Plaid stopped and bestowed an empty grin on us.
“Do you speak English?”
“No, no English. I speak French. And I speak Algerian.” Plaid held up his hands as if he were off the hook and turned to continue on his way.
“En francaise, c’est bien,” Bob said, dredging up his French. “We want to talk to you.” He tossed the video camera to me.
“Okay, nice to meet you.” Plaid offered his hand. Bob shook it without hesitation, neatly stealing Plaid’s watch at the same time. I was still fumbling with the camera so half the watch steal was filmed upside down.
“We’d like to ask you some questions.” Bob dangled the watch in front of Plaid, who glanced at his naked wrist then back to Bob. He broke into a bewildered smile.
“That’s superb. Please…”
Bob will often steal something from a thief then return it for a reaction. His unique talent instantly establishes rapport with an outlaw and, more often then not, they’ll talk to us.
Plaid, an opportunist pickpocket whose method is stealth, is a lone wolf. He works solo, without a partner. His neat clothes and haircut, decent shoes, and polite manner are calculated to blend into a crowd. He’s a chameleon. We call him a gentleman thief, a type almost impossible to detect.
“I want you to explain for me—”
“Why me?”
“Because we have watched you work.” Bob tried to explain that he is an “artiste,” a stage performer, but Plaid couldn’t grasp the concept of stealing as entertainment.
“Please, don’t tell anyone what I do. I know this is bad work. You know, this is Spain, and there is no job for me. I have no papers… that’s why I’m doing this. Because I have a child to feed. See, I have reasons to steal, because I need to feed my baby.”
He tried to give Bob a little advice, one pickpocket pal to another. “Use your brain, be smart. You don’t need violence. Use your mind.”
The pickpocket took a few steps backwards, itchy to make his escape. “You need patience to do this. Now I must go. Let me say good-bye.”
And the gentleman thief was gone, an invisible germ in an oblivious crowd.
La Rambla, Barcelona—On one crowded summer Sunday, Bob and I patrolled the perimeters of the street performers’ audiences. Of all the thieves and con men we watched that day, and there were many, “Plaid Shirt” was the slickest. I locked onto him because of his smile.
A Spanish folksinger had attracted an audience of hundreds. Backpackers were camped long-term on the ground, and people stood four and five deep behind them in a giant circle, enjoying the free concert.
An opportunist pickpocket
Plaid Shirt was neatly dressed and I almost eliminated him on the basis of the thick wallet in his back pocket. His gray plaid shirt tucked into dark blue jeans did not grab my attention. The windbreaker he carried over his arm was a tip-off, but not a dead giveaway. I had considered a sweater myself that morning, and wished for one in the evening.
Can you identify the pickpocket in the crowd?
What raised my antennas was his behavior. Plaid Shirt sidled up close into the back of the attentive audience. After a minute, a man beside him turned and glared at him. My suspect smiled in response and took half a step back. But that smile! It was the paradigm of shit-eating grin.
Plaid Shirt, the opportunist pickpocket, slowly and calmly relocated, pressing himself into another section of the crowd. He did this repeatedly, never staying more than two minutes in one spot. I tagged onto him, stepping right in behind or beside him. Whenever he turned to leave, I swiveled away or moved in the opposite direction.
Later Bob joined me with his camera. Plaid continued his pattern of getting close, then backing off. When he was glared at, he proffered his cat-ate-canary grin; but more often he was not noticed at all.
Round and round the periphery we went. After Bob got some footage of Plaid, I moved even closer and learned his secret specialty. With absolute stealth and fingers like feathers, Plaid lifted the flaps on men’s cargo pockets—those low-down side pants pockets—and unbuttoned them. Despite his use of a jacket for cover, I saw him unbutton three cargo pockets and one hip pocket, on four men. He probably opened many others I couldn’t see.
I did not, however, see him steal any wallets.
Why did he leave each mark after only opening the button? Did he sense the men had felt him? Was he just setting up for a later approach? Most of his targets seemed not to have sensed anything amiss.
Amazed that he hadn’t wisened to me, I began to think of Plaid as a hapless fool. We’d circled and circled the audience together, moving in, pausing, moving on. For forty-five minutes I followed the pickpocket’s balding head while he failed to notice me. With my bright white dress and big curly hair, it’s not as if I were totally inconspicuous. If he’d gotten anything, he would have left, at least long enough to dump the leather.
Meanwhile, Bob dared not get close, although he may as well have. Plaid was concentrating so intently he wouldn’t even have noticed a six-foot-five videographer hovering over him. But Bob hung back while Plaid and I traced a flower-petal design around the hand-clapping fans, curving in and out at irregular intervals.
Plaid moved in behind a man with a child balanced on his shoulders. The man swayed gently with the music and the child tapped her thigh. Plaid lowered his jacket and positioned his body, attempting to block sight lines. I snuck in closer, in time to watch Plaid lift the flap of the father’s cargo pocket, and slowly open the button. I motioned for Bob to come near. This was a good opportunity with enough of a view.
Plaid worked meticulously. Stealth was his main operative, with nerve and patience tied for second and a goofy smile his ace in the hole. He kept his face forward and head straight; only his eyes flicked down now and then. Father and child were oblivious. The music swelled.
Plaid took a half step away. No reaction from the mark. He moved back in and lowered his jacket again. Bob slipped up behind me and I edged away, letting him have the sightline. In the background now, I went crazy not knowing. Was Plaid extracting the wallet? Was Bob getting it on camera? What would we do afterward: alert the father or try to talk to Plaid? I crept up, trying to see.
Interruption!—
Have I described La Rambla’s comical chair patrolman? He controls the rows of chairs on the upper end of the boulevard, collecting a few coins for the privilege of resting tired feet in prime people-watching seats. With his many-pocketed vest, visor cap, and change-purse at his waist, he looks like a circus clown’s imitation of a policeman. For years we’ve seen him waddling around his territory, a stern eye on his lucrative concession, quasi-defender of all he surveys.
—A shrill whistle blew, not far from our ears.
The superintendent of chairs marched toward us, pointing.
“Pick-pock-et!” he said, the whistle dropping from his mouth to his chest. “Attencione!”
The concert continued. The father and child still swayed to the music. Only three people reacted to the pretender-officer’s accusation, and we three rearranged ourselves into an eccentric perimeter parade.
Plaid beat it around the circle and we followed. He still didn’t seem to be aware of us, the witless dolt. Like Plaid, I dodged cars in the street where the crowd stretched to the curb, but Bob was slower with a heavy camera-bag on his shoulder. I waited for him, keeping an eye on Plaid who had abandoned the game and now stood at a closed lotto booth.
What was he doing there? He was facing an inward corner, a niche in the wall of the kiosk, very close, but looking away, toward me. He was doing something with his hands. I stared at him, not worried now about being noticed. As before, Plaid looked innocently away from his busy hands.
Bob reached me. “Where is he?”
“One o’clock. At the kiosk. I bet he’s dumping a wallet!”
Plaid finished and strode away. I ran to the kiosk and, raising my sunglasses, peered closely into the dark shadow of the niche.
My old friend Avis perused my blog just before her recent trip to Spain. Then she wrote me, doubly concerned. She and her 25ish son were heading to Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, and day trips from those places. She was mostly worried for Zac, who didn’t take the threat seriously. She planned to use a small backpack for herself.
Immediately, I replied:
Briefly, I don’t recommend a backpack unless you plan to carry it on your chest. It’s totally out of your control back there. Try to find a bag with a short strap that fits close to your armpit. More later…
The next day, when I had more time, I provided more thorough advice to my friend:
Great trip you’ve got planned but, yeah, you have to be careful. Zac should not carry a wallet in his back pocket. Tell him that the easiest victims are the ones who say “it won’t happen to me.”
Strip your wallets of anything not necessary. It’s best to carry your passport (when you must carry it) and big cash in a pouch under your clothes. It can be one that hangs around your neck under your shirt, or our favorite, one that hangs inside your pants and has a loop that your belt goes through. These come in several sizes and different materials. Pickpocket proof!
Use a credit card for most purchases so you don’t need to carry a lot of euros. Make photocopies of both sides of all the cards in your wallet, and your passport first page, and keep the copies in your largest luggage. If you can, email the copies to yourself. That way you can get them from any computer any time.
Watch your bags at all times. In the airport, getting out of the taxi in front of your hotel, checking into the hotel, renting a car, etc. Don’t put your bag on the floor or back of your chair in a cafe. If your (or Zac’s) jacket is hanging on the back of a chair in a restaurant, make sure the pockets are empty. Don’t let yourself get distracted by someone asking an innocent question. I know I’m making it sound scary but really, if you pay attention, nothing will happen. If you look away, something might disappear.
Be especially careful on public transportation, getting on and off buses and trains, and going down the metro stairs. If your stuff is in front of you or tucked under your arm, you’ll be okay.
Search barcelona on my blog and read those stories for examples of the creative ruses that trick people into losing their stuff. The pigeon poop ploy, the swipe off tables, fake football, pseudo-cops, and endless good samaritan tricks. Sorry, but it’s true.
A new website just started called RobbedInBarcelona On twitter they’re @RiBCN, and they have a fb page “I know someone who got robbed in Barcelona.” They’re trying to shame the city into doing something. Just read the quotes they translated.
Still, bcn is one of my favorite cities in the world. The food, the mood, the architecture, the galleries…
Pickpocketed anyway.
Pretty good advice, I thought. But not good enough. Avis reported back after her trip:
There’s no other way to say this or to soften the blow, my shame… I had my wallet with my 2 credit cards and debit card and drivers license and 150 in Euros and ?? US money stolen on the metro after landing at the Madrid airport on my first day! The rest of the trip was great. Honestly I can’t figure out how or when the theft occurred, those guys are good, and yes I had a terrific traveling money thing to stick in my pants, but I was going to do it all when I got to the hotel, I did remain vigilant and yet I was got. Zac sez I manifested it and maybe I did.
One way to avoid pickpockets!
Sounds like the boy’s gloating. Schadenfreude, anyone? Impressed with the slickness of her thieves, Avis related just how diligent she’d been:
I was careful to bury my wallet in the bottom of my zipped bag. On top of it was a book, glass case, papers and my passport, which was in the “travel wallet” on the very bottom. The bag was my everyday purse: a woman’s purse-type backpack that I could wear with the straps on my back (in other words nice fabric and small; not a school or travelers’ backpack). It has zippers and a pocket in the front which were untouched. I did not have it on my back EVER, rather on one shoulder so that I could hold it with one arm, or in front of my body. My best guess is that the theft occurred on the escalator when it must have swung behind me and when I obviously couldn’t see behind me and movement was occurring. The zipper was only open about 5 inches (amazing!)
I told Avis that pickpockets do try to close the zippers they’ve opened, if they have time. Gives them a few more seconds to get away if the victim should happen to glance at her bag. I’m sorry that I didn’t warn my friend to prepare herself immediately, even before stepping off her plane. After a long overnight flight, groggy, distracted, burdened with luggage, navigating an unfamiliar Metro system and trying to find a hotel you’ve never seen, you’re at your most vulnerable. Pickpockets know this. As proof, Avis added:
The receptionist at our hotel in Madrid said 3 other guests (currently staying in the same hotel) were robbed at the airport. 3!!!!
The lesson I learned from Avis’s experience is this: at the risk of sounding like an alarmist, stress early preparedness. Stress that bags don’t have nerve-endings, and therefore need to be in line-of-sight. Emphasize that while we are busy with travel concerns, thieves are focused on finding the chink in our armor. A moment of distraction is the gift of an opportunity to a pickpocket.
One day in Spain and we are bombarded with sad stories, particularly of crime in Madrid.
Crime in Madrid
1. Madrid Metro: A couple in their 60s are on a train when they are surrounded. The woman has everything of value in her fanny pack. She has too much of value in her fanny pack. Not only does she have seven credit cards, her driver’s license, and her husband’s driver’s license, but she also has both their social security cards and a slip of paper with the user names and passwords for all their credit cards and banks.
Yep. All stolen. Plus lotsa cash. She felt it happening, but was too intimidated to speak up. Anyway, it happened too fast. The perps got off the train immediately, as if they’d timed the theft to coincide with the doors opening. Which, of course, they had.
Yeah, there really are people like this. Born victims, you might say.
2. Madrid Metro: Same day. A 30ish New York woman traveling with her Spanish boyfriend is hit on an escalator. She has her purse zipped into a large bag on her shoulder. Yes, the bag could have been hanging toward her back, instead of in front of her. She notices the women behind her as she is about to get on the escalator, and she notices that when she gets on, they don’t. She checks her bag and—yep. Purse gone. In it: all the couple’s cash, all their credit cards, their travel itinerary for tomorrow’s flight, the name and address of their hotel, and their passports.
Well, they do have €50. They spend the rest of the day canceling credit cards and making phone calls to recover their travel information. In the morning, they’re able to fly from Madrid to Malaga without passports. They’re to join a cruise ship, but they’re not allowed to board without their passports, and have to fly back to Madrid to visit the embassy.
3. Malaga: Next day. Another American couple, both speakers, land in Malaga and rent a car. They drive to their hotel, a small place on a small street. She goes to check in while he unloads the car. He takes out their two large suitcases and a bellman brings them into the lobby. Meanwhile, the man removes from the car a backpack and a small suitcase, and sets them down beside the car while he fiddles with the unfamiliar lock buttons on the rental car key. When he turns back to the two small bags, one is gone. He assumes the bellman picked it up.
No, the bellman hadn’t. Our friend, a frequent world traveler, hadn’t noticed anyone around him out by the car. In the stolen backpack: all their cash, credit cards, an expensive camera, a very expensive computer loaded with too much data, and the charger for their other computer, which already had a dead battery.
Go for the tapas, but stow your stuff safely.
4. Same day, more crime in Madrid: an active woman, a practitioner of yoga, has her purse snatched in a brutal manner. She falls down and, almost two weeks later, is still in a wheelchair.
5. Same day, more crime in Madrid: a wiry, active man, 60ish, who “grew up on the wrong side of the tracks,” feels his male pickpockets working on him. I don’t know why this man carries a cane; he doesn’t appear to need one. But he has it and swings it. Three times, he bashes his accosters. “Got ’em good. They ran.”
