It was Cecily’s dream vacation: she and her family had rented an ancient stone farmhouse near St.-Paul-de-Vence on the French Riviera. Recently renovated to luxurious standards, it stood between an olive orchard and a lavender farm, strolling distance from the sea, and it came with a Renault.
For their first morning, coffee, baguette, and fresh farm butter had been delivered by the agent. Cecily feasted lightly on the terrace, then drove into Nice and shopped for groceries. So far, excellent. She loaded the Renault feeling spiffy, pleased with her success, and rather… je ne sais quois. Perhaps rather French.
Just as Cecily got into the car a nice-looking man approached and asked her something: where could he buy a newspaper? where was a petrol station? Cecily’s French had rusted since high school, but she struggled to understand.
“Don’t worry,” the man said in English. “I am not going to steal from you.”
What? Cecily swiveled in her seat just in time to see another man, a partner, dash off with her purse which, sadly, still contained her entire family’s passports and return air tickets. The nice-looking man at her window was gone.
Part of the police contingent present at Bob's lectures.
Panama City, Panama—Bob asked one of our Panama police escorts what serious crimes against tourists had occurred recently. The officer stunned us with a horrific story of some visitors who had rented a car and driven to a lodge in a rainforest. They were ambushed somewhere out in the countryside and robbed of everything.
With disgust all over his face, the officer went on: the perpetrators, it was later discovered, were police officers. They had been tipped off by someone at the airport or car rental agency.
Two days later, we saw an English-language Panama paper:
…members of the Tourism Police who arrested three men who are suspected of being part of a gang that robs tourists allegedly smashed the suspects’ fingers with a hammer, beat them with golf clubs and forced their heads into bags full of pepper gas in an attempt to make them reveal what happened to the proceeds of a string of robberies. According to a report, the crime was allegedly aggravated by the cops’ motive to make the suspects reveal where the money was so that they could take it for themselves. —The Panama News
It was pitch dark in Casco Antigua. It's amazing what a good digital camera can do.
We returned to Panama half a year later and, though it was already 9 p.m., made straight for the old, dilapidated, historic section of Panama City. We walked the dark and dangerous streets with our cameras dangling and very soon approached a few people loitering on a corner to ask for Angel or Jaime, the former thieves.
The loiterers whistled over an English-speaker: amazingly, it was Angel’s mother. She and one of the men, a private security guard, walked us to a gangster hangout, and there we spoke with about a dozen young thugs, Angel’s mother translating.
Again, this was a dark night. Taken with a flash and lightened in Photoshop.
The boys sized us up quickly and automatically, and we did the same. I looked at their smooth skin, fake-tough faces, and posturing, and couldn’t prevent wistful thoughts of their youth and potential, or lack of potential. Bob did some goofy steals on the guys. One of them brandished a cellphone and fancy money-clip full of cash, claiming he’d just lifted them. Despite all their braggadocio, the gangsters clearly wanted a little old-fashioned fun. Like the thieves we speak to the world over, they blossom when spoken to with simple respect.
Eventually, a stoned-looking Angel arrived, with bloodshot eyes, no job, no vocation, and apparently still one of the gang. We wouldn’t be surprised if he was back to thieving. Jaime, on the other hand, was working with the Department of Tourism, we were told.
The gangsters got a kick out of Bob's attention. They probably behaved themselves because of Angel's mother's deference to us.
A pair of cops arrived on the scene and chastised us for clowning around with these criminals. We were not allowed to be in this area at this hour. There had been a murder right here five days ago. The cops pointed us out of the neighborhood and gave us a virtual kick in the butt along with the virtual spanking. Before we left the district, Angel’s mother brought us into her friend’s house. Angel followed and asked us for a gift of cash, which we gave him.
As far as gangsters go, these don't look too threatening. But what do all their hand gestures mean?
Angel’s mother talks to Bob while Angel and Jaime play. Notice Jaime’s prop.
Panama City, Panama—Angel lives in the school building with his mother and assorted siblings. Aha! So that’s who’d done all the neat laundry hanging inside the school gate. Bob asked Angel to fetch his mother who, to our surprise, was not only willing to speak with a camera in her face, but did so in English. She used to work in a casino, which is how she learned English.
Angel was always different from his brothers, his mother explained. Eventually he stopped going to school, stayed out late, and didn’t listen to his mother. He’s changed a lot since he’s been in this program, she said. Now he’s good, he’s home every night, goes to bed early, and gets up early.
With reluctance, Angel’s mother allowed me into her home. A television blared among the mattresses in the empty bedroom.
The audacious Bob Arno asked to see where she lives and where Angel sleeps. There’s no end to Bob’s impudence. He has no humility.
What thoughts of hope played in Angel’s mother’s mind as she led us to her “apartment?” Who are these impertinent snoops, she must have wondered, poking around here two days in a row, sometimes escorted by police chiefs, bodyguards, and interpreters? Foreign dignitaries? Potential benefactors? Deus ex machinas?
She shuffled to a wooden door and ordered Angel to get rid of the dogs yapping in front of a knee-high board. “I’m sorry. Be careful,” she said, pointing to the scrappy barrier.
I don’t know who felt worse about this intrusion, Angel’s mother, or I.
“My wife will film it,” Bob said, manipulating me forward. I was mortified, ashamed by my violation of the poor woman’s privacy. But like the woman, I wasn’t given a choice, and it would have been more embarrassing to refuse. I couldn’t think how to stop on a dime after I’d been pushed down a slippery slope. I shouldered the offensive video camera and, with one eye on the viewfinder and the other watching my feet, stepped over the dogs at the door and the scrap of wood meant to keep them out of the room.
There was also a chest of drawers in the room, with all its drawers open and spilling clothes.
Angel’s mom showed me around, pointing out her possessions. She kept a running dialog, but I heard none of it, due to a blaring television, yapping dogs, and my extreme discomfort with this assignment.
Handicapped, double-jointed, or injured? A dog in Casco Antigua.
Properties in San Filipe, a World Heritage Site, are being purchased and restored by foreigners.
Panama City, Panama—Bob and I had come to Panama as guests of the national and local police departments and the Panama National Hotel Association. The Central American country aspires to a boom in tourism and recognizes the need to curb street crime in its cities, tourist areas, and especially San Filipe, aka Casco Antigua, Panama City’s old town and a World Heritage Site.
Panama Policia Nacional
Bringing in Bob Arno as a consultant to the tourism industry and trainer for police departments and security divisions was a major organizational feat involving numerous government agencies.
Panama Policia Nacional
(The coup is entirely credited to the gentle, eloquent, and now retired Carlos Sanad of the Office of the Attorney General in Panama.) Bob and I were treated like dignitaries during our stay in Panama, hosted at the country’s newest, grandest resorts, provided with several translators, and always shadowed by bodyguards. We were transported in police vans but, in order to conduct our simultaneous research, often felt the necessity of ditching the navy-suited men talking into their wrists.
Guests of the government require ever-present bodyguards.
When we interviewed Angel and his pal Jaime, we left all badge-bearers outside. What would the gangsters tell us with police present? Perhaps that is why they felt free to demonstrate their pickpocketing techniques and speak of their criminal exploits. That, and Bob’s easy, simpatico demeanor. They showed their choreography with pride.
Jaime shows Bob how he extracts a wallet.
Bob was unimpressed with the boys’ talent. I was a bit more forgiving: presumably, they were rusty, being officially out of the business. Not to mention under great pressure with an audience of two foreign “filmmakers,” and cameras rolling.
Angel and Jaime claimed they didn’t exploit the credit cards they got in wallets, though they occasionally sold them to a fence. They received so little money for credit cards that they usually just threw them away. They wanted cash; the wallets they took usually contained $40-100, sometimes as much as $200. (Panama uses U.S. currency.)
Jaime listened intently and answered intelligently.
Now that they’re out of the business, the boys miss the healthy takings they used to enjoy. They find it difficult to live on their legitimate incomes of two to three dollars a day, which they get from the government.
Bob interviews Angel amid the ruins of an unused schoolyard.
Panama City, Panama—As Bob and Angel spoke, a tall, handsome boy appeared dribbling a basketball. Soon he was part of our interview. His name was Jaime. He and Angel grew up together, were gangsters and pickpockets together, and were now together in the rehabilitation program.
As pickpockets, Angel and Jaime worked on buses as people got on and off them, at sports events, and at rock concerts.
Jaime, left, is bright and engaging, with the magnetic personality and intense eyes that Angel lacks.
Jaime took a crisp, clean Manila folder from under his arm, which he had brought along specifically to demonstrate how he used it—or something—to shield his handiwork. I was impressed that he had thought to bring a prop. Bob now addressed his questions to Jaime, whose alert demeanor was a welcome improvement over Angel’s empty, shifty eyes. Jaime was engaging, eager to answer, intelligent.
Jaime and Angel demonstrate their classic drop-stall-bump-steal method.
Their best method was the classic “sandwich,” in which one of them would drop keys or coins in front of a mark while the other nabbed his wallet from behind. They demonstrated using Bob as the victim. Then Jaime showed a close-up of his extraction technique. He gripped just a corner of the wallet and sort of zigzagged it up and out of the pocket. He smiled brightly, and I thought he’d make an excellent tour guide some day. Angel, if he’s lucky, might be suitable as a fry cook, or maybe a bell boy.
Buses in Panama are privately owned and serious works of art.
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.
Caught-in-the-act criminals aren’t always keen on conversation. “Why I should talk to you!” some say. We’ve been threatened with rocks, hit, spit upon, flipped off, and mooned. But we’re constantly astonished at how many thieves talk to us. Why do they do it? We don’t flash badges at them, we don’t dangle handcuffs. The outlaws don’t know who we are or what’s behind our front. Might we be undercover cops? Hard to imagine, with our flimsy body structures and frequent lack of local language.
Interviewing thieves
My husband, Bob Arno, can usually find a common language for an interview, though he or the perp may have limited ability with it. Sometimes we have a translator with us or can snag one, impromptu. Most importantly, Bob has a unique advantage: he has worked for forty years as a pickpocket.
These pickpockets saw our video camera and let us know what they thought of us.
Inside knowledge, familiarity with moves and challenges, and level dialogue allay our subjects’ suspicions. Or perhaps they’re highly suspicious, nervous, and confused. Ultimately, they don’t know what to make of us.
Okay, so Bob’s a stage pickpocket. He steals from audience members in a comedy setting and always returns his booty. But the physical techniques are the same, the distraction requirement, the analysis of body language, the sheer balls. And Bob has that other illicit necessity: grift sense. He can sense a con, he can play a con.
No doubt our interviewees intuit that in only moments. Next thing we know they’re buying us a beer, accepting our invitation to lunch or, in our favorite case, offering us lucrative work as partners.
While victims relate their anger, inconvenience, and bemusement, their perpetrators tell tales of persecution, desperation, an unjust world, or alternative beliefs in the rights of ownership.
Off stage but on duty: Bob Arno films thieves on public transportation, here with a hidden camera in his right hand. A Thief on Thieves Conning Criminals into Conversation
Las Vegas — Who said it takes a thief to know a thief? The Tall Swede Journal detained a legal one to tell about his criminal cohorts.
Tall Swede Journal:When you’re not on stage, you find, follow, and film street thieves in action. That’s not a common pursuit, is it?
Bob Arno: I don’t think so. My wife and I might be the only ones who take it to such a sophisticated level.
TSJ: You seek out dangerous criminals with your wife?
BA: They’re usually not dangerous. But we can never be certain.
TSJ: Why might they be dangerous?
Bob speaks with two slippery pickpockets in Estonia.
BA: Many have drug habits, so they’re unpredictable, and so is their level of desperation. Others have such long arrest records, they may do anything in an attempt to avoid jail. And others may be illegally in the country. Desperate, hunted people who are already on the wrong side of the law may feel they have little to lose.
TSJ: Bob, were you ever on the other side? You must have been.
BA: You won’t find a police record on me!
TSJ: I know, we’ve checked. How, then, do you find these thieves? How do you recognize what they are?
BA: We hang out in the environments that are suitable for this sort of occupation and we focus on behavior. A person intending to steal exhibits certain necessary “tells.” He must look at his target, watch for police, beware of curious bystanders, and surreptitiously maneuver his target into a viable position. He usually also carries a “tool,” something to cover his moves, but it’s almost always an ordinary object which alone wouldn’t cause suspicion.
“I claim [to the thief] to be in the same
profession, but I don’t elaborate. I don’t
tell them that I only steal on stage.”
TSJ: Would it be fair to say that you profile?
BA: It would be fair to say that we profile behavior.
TSJ: You mean that a thief doesn’t behave like a citizen or tourist?
BA: He certainly wishes to, but a trained observer can see through his charade.
TSJ: Any other way you find thieves?
BA: Yes. By allowing them to steal my own wallet. I stuff it with cut paper and shove it deep into my pocket. I have a wallet that’s been stolen over a hundred times.
TSJ: How do you get it back?
BA: Sometimes I steal it back! Or I steal something else from the thief, like his cell phone or sunglasses. Then I offer to trade his item for my wallet. All of this is simply to start a conversation and establish rapport.
TSJ: Then they open up to you? Why don’t they just run?
An Italian thief greets Bob with hugs and kisses, then introduces him to his pals (Filmed with a hidden camera.)
BA: They’re curious about who I am. I claim to be in the same profession they are in, but I don’t elaborate. I don’t tell them that I steal on stage, and they don’t understand the concept of returning stolen items. So, yes. About half of them are willing to talk and the other half prefer to disappear into the crowd.
TSJ: What do they reveal? What do you learn from them?
BA: Techniques, motivations, their lifestyles, the politics that allow them—or force them, from their perspective—to steal for a living.
TSJ: And what do you do with the data you gather?
BA: I train law enforcement and security agencies, I teach travelers how to avoid becoming victims, I’ve written a book, and I testify as an expert witness.
TSJ: Seems to be a useful pursuit, if an unusual one.
BA: Yes. And it also satisfies the original intent, which was to adapt street techniques for use in my stage show. But it turns out that the intelligence is appreciated by more than just my audience.
TSJ: Are you still actively researching street crime?
BA: Absolutely! We focused on Central America recently. We spent significant time in Panama interviewing a very dangerous gang [article coming shortly], and we are planning to revisit the Middle East later this year.
TSJ: I have to ask you once more: have you ever stolen for real?
BA: I have a very fine soap collection.
TSJ: Alright Bob, I’ll leave it at that. Thanks very much for speaking with The Tall Swede Journal.
This interview was originally published in The Tall Swede Journal.
In which Bob Arno and his fancy accessory spy on the Russians.
A man plays accordion on a Russian bridge
St. Petersburg, Russia— I was ensconced in my stake-out spot on the Canal Griboyedova across from the Gostiny Dvor Metro station; Bob was elsewhere. My position was excellent: close to the action, but the canal between my spot and the crime scene prevented my view from being blocked by passing people. It also had a massive, standing concrete slab, some sort of abandoned roadworks part, which I could duck behind when necessary. Leaded exhaust already lined my nasal passages, and fresh pee fumes rose from the slab. The location wasn’t perfect. I did enjoy the faint strains of accordion from a man squeezing one on the canal bridge half a block away.
Bambi's canal-side hide-out, beside a pee-stained concrete slab.
After filming alone for an hour or so, Bob passed behind me as if he didn’t know me and suggested I cross Nevsky Prospekt because the Mongolian pickpocket gang was at work in the crosswalk, out of my field of view. I did so, but felt exposed and nervous. I half hid behind a billboard and tried to film them, but the angle wasn’t good. A constant stream of pedestrians and traffic blocked my view of the corner. I was also afraid that, since they knew me, one of the gangsters would approach me from behind, or while I was looking through the camera’s view finder. After a while Bob came to get me again.
Bob speaks to the ice cream seller, who has contraband to pass off.
He brought me over to an ice cream cart on the corner in front of the Kazansky Cathedral. The proprietor, Katarina Pavlova, spoke French to Bob. She said she had noticed that he was observing the pickpockets, and that she had something to show him. She looked left and right before explaining that one of the thieves had walked past her stand and tossed something into her trash. Digging through the garbage, she retrieved a thick stack of credit cards, ID, and other wallet contents belonging to a 55-year-old French woman.
The wallet contents had been tossed into the ice cream seller's trash can.
The ice cream seller said she felt it was safe enough to tell us only because this was her last day of work; she was retiring from the ice cream business and planned to stay out of the city. She pressed the plundered heap into Bob’s hand with a forced crooked smile. He should take it. For some reason, she felt it was right.
She retrieved the stolen credit cards from her trash can after seeing the thieves throw them in.
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So. Pickpockets were dumping ID and credit cards. This seemed to corroborate what other thieves and the police had told us: that the guys working the streets do not exploit credit cards. But what were we to do with the cards? Of course, we immediately thought, we’d try to return them to the victim. After all, they included a telephone number and address. But just as quickly, with a chill, we asked ourselves if this was a set-up. Can you imagine the shakedown? We’re accused of being pickpockets, searched, and found with a French woman’s documents. What would that cost in baksheesh? I imagined handcuffs; then beatings and prison and huge ransoms.
Here you can see the peeish concrete slab. Bambi stands against the canal rail, in her black camouflage.
Bob took the cards.
I objected. So we compromised. We gave the cards back to the ice cream seller, then videotaped her handing them over to Bob and explaining how she had obtained them. Might not stand up in court, but it eased my mind. Eventually, we did try to phone the woman in France, but the number was no longer good. We put them into the mail and never heard of them again.
A little Russian gypsy girl plays in the street
We wandered a couple blocks down, halfway between Nevsky Prospekt and the Church on the Spilled Blood, toward an internet cafe. We’d been inside it many times, and it was always empty except for the sour boy who took our coins. Wandering along, we paused in the oppressive heat to watch a tiny barefooted girl squatting in the street, spinning an old muffler.
She begs and gets a bottle of water
With fine-tuned radar, she leapt to her feet as a man and woman strolled into view and ran to them as fast as her heavy velvet dress allowed. Her big brown eyes netted a bottle of water, which she appeared to take with delight. She went back to her muffler, only to rise again for the next couple, who tried to ignore her.
She latches onto the leg of a passerby
The tenacious little beggar latched onto the man’s leg and wouldn’t let go. When she fell to her knees, the man literally dragged her along the pavement.
The girl is given a dollar
One American dollar freed him. The girl admired her take, carefully folded the bill, and stuffed it into a small pouch that hung from her neck. We watched her until she ran to her mother, who sat on the ground with an infant a block away, leaning against the canal rail.
The little beggar girl tucks money into her pouchShe runs back to, probably, her mother and baby sibling
Late that night, we spoke with a group of Belgian tourists who said that they had been robbed the day before while coming out of the Metro station on Nevsky Prospekt. Three women were hit. One had her purse slashed with a blade and all contents were removed. Her arm had been across her purse. The cut was just under her forearm. The thief had planted his elbow in the woman’s stomach. The other woman had her fannypack opened. The pickpocket handed her passport back to her, indicating that it had been on the ground. I didn’t get the story of the third woman.
Andrey Umansky, a front desk manager at the Grand Hotel Europe, used to work at Baltic Tours, a tour bus operator. Every spring, before tourist season began, they’d pay the police, he said. The deal was that they’d use special signs affixed to buses and carried on sticks, which were meant to tell thieves to stay away from this group. And the police, he explained, made deals with the thieves in order to protect the groups that paid for protection.
There’s lots more.
Another day…
See Russian Rip-off, a five-part post with video.
