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.
 Â
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.
Â
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.
St. Petersburg, a few weeks later—We loaded ourselves with video equipment this time, and headed straight for the Metro corner. Having spoken with the gang three weeks earlier, we were afraid to get too close. We wanted to observe them in action without being noticed. I found an excellent location just across the canal from the Metro entrance, a perfect stake-out spot with a convenient cement chunk I could hide behind when necessary. Bob wandered, undisguisable, wishing for a height reduction.
Instant gratification! (No, not Bob getting shorter.) First I noticed two of the gang leaning on the canal wall, watching the heavy flow of people going into and out of the Metro.
A pickpocket gang member on the phone
I recognized others loitering in the doorway and on the street corner. Most of them seemed to get or make frequent phone calls. They often disappeared from view, melting into the crowd, ducking into the station, or being obscured by traffic.
Suddenly, they’re off and running. I follow with my video camera. The victim doesn’t have a chance. Six gang members surround him. It’s impossible to see them all at any one moment, but on the video (see Part 2), you can see them dance around the mark like a Russian ballet. Two men maneuver themselves in front of him, impeding his progress. Four others are behind and beside him. Then, to buy more time, the largest of the team, in the gray t-shirt, spins around and shoves his weight against the victim’s chest and stomach, nearly doubling him over.
It was impossible to determine if anything had been taken. I had to choose who to follow with the camera and I chose to follow the thieves, who quickly dispersed, then regrouped. I don’t know how the victim reacted seconds later. He immediately left my field of vision.
I got another pursuit on film, but it ended behind an ice cream kiosk that blocked my view. I wasn’t far away, but I was stationary, with a canal in front of me. I got lots of shots of the thieves positioning themselves among the crowds crossing the street.
An opposing gang of pickpockets in St. Petersburg
Meanwhile, Bob wandered through the danger zone. He watched other thieves display their well-practiced choreography. They also employed the Russian sandwich, with a dropped piece of paper, a bend, a block, and a partner’s pluck from behind.
Mohammed is fine. He’s recovered from his near-arrest and is friendly with us again. We didn’t dare ask him to interpret for us again. But we met a nice Russian woman at the black market who teaches English…
St. Petersburg— “They think I robbed you,” he said.
By then it must have been obvious to the cops that we were not Mohammed’s victims, or anyone else’s, either. But they’d created such a melee they couldn’t let go, didn’t want to believe there really was no problem. Finally, they left with a warning to Mohammed, who was so shaken he just collapsed onto his low stool and hung his head. He wouldn’t look up at us so we left him, thinking he was angry with us for getting him involved.
So the cops had seen us and Mohammed together with a gang of known thieves. Why, then, did they arrest the local underdog, instead of the criminals? In St. Petersburg, where the police are pitifully paid (about 2000 rubles/month, US$70 at the time), payoffs are their bread and butter. Officers routinely roam the streets collecting 100 rubles ($3+) here and there, from unlicensed merchants selling caviar or souvenirs. Pickpockets pay police too. They buy a piece of property for a limited time span. This allows many thieves to work, and keeps them in their own territories. Vladimir, a pickpocket we met some years ago, had a one-hour-a-day claim on a short segment of Nevsky Prospekt. The Mongolian gang seems to own the Metro station corner.
When thieves are caught, they pay 700 or so rubles ($23) to the police and are let go. It’s well known, Mohammed’s friend Anton told us earlier, that police are corrupt and will take bribes for anything. They can be seen on the streets looking for unlicensed merchants in order to shake them down instead of looking for thieves. Why would they arrest thieves? The system works well the way it is, and rich foreign tourists fund it.
Tangentially interesting, Anton, who also works at the art market, told us that when a person is picked up for being drunk, the police steal everything from him: money, watch, and jewelry. Then they put the drunk in a cold shower to wake him up and put him out on the street. If the citizen complains of being robbed, the police claim he must have lost his belongings while he was drunk. Anton described his father’s clever hiding place for cash. He slits the inside of the waistband of his jeans and slips folded money inside. When he’s drunk and shaken down, the police don’t find the money, but take everything else.
St. Petersburg—Pseudo-cops!” we thought: bandits who pretend to be police. We’re about to be robbed! At the same time, I thought: no, we’re about to be robbed by real cops of the corrupt variety. The four of us in that deserted alley made a huge commotion.
Bob pointed to the entrance we had come from and shouted “You’re police? Okay, over there!” I shouted “in the public area!” and they shouted in Russian. We had no idea what they wanted. We carried a $1,000 digital still camera, but no video equipment and, thankfully, no hidden video equipment, which might have been considered illegal.
As our captors escorted us back to the art market alley entrance we heard the bleeping of police radios and saw police equipment under their shirts. Yet, knowing they were real cops did not put us at ease. We were still four agitated, confused, and rather scared people, unable to communicate. My thoughts were, get to a public place so we won’t be ripped off; find Mohammed to translate.
The cops allowed us to lead them into public view, or they led us. Just outside the alley gate, in the art market, we saw Mohammed on the ground with a gun to his stomach. Four other plainclothes cops had him surrounded. Everyone was yelling and a crowd had gathered. Mohammed was the only one capable of translating for us and he was beside himself, terrified and at gunpoint. As soon as we arrived he was hauled up and shoved against a wall, the gun still at his belly.
My reaction was to grab onto Mohammed. I hugged him, trying to show the cops that he didn’t do anything wrong to us, that he was our friend. Bob tried to reason with the cops, but none spoke English. Then six uniformed cops joined the fracas and our concern escalated. How far could this thing go, and what is it? For a few minutes, the uniforms were more interested in the plainclothes than in the civilians. With machine guns pointed, they demanded IDs from the plainclothes officers and scrutinized them intensely.
Mohammed had told us the previous day that because of his looks, he is frequently stopped and challenged by the police. With everyone still shouting and confused, including him, we couldn’t find out if this was one of those “challenges.” Why did Mohammed have a gun in his stomach? Why were we hauled into this business?
Bob dropped the name of an ex-KGB officer we know, with no idea where it would lead. Like a silent fart mysteriously clearing a room, the officers scattered and disappeared. The only Russian sounds we could dredge up turned out to be powerful, indeed.
“What is the accusation?” I asked Mohammed, several times before he quieted and paid attention.
St. Petersburg—we were surrounded by five hostile faces. Shaking inside, we stood firm until the men stalked off. Bob and I crossed the street to photograph the scene of the crime. Since the gangsters were still at work, I ducked into a shop doorway to be less obtrusive. Two men followed me in. They were thieves ready to snatch my camera, so I threw its strap over my head, pirouetted in the vestibule, and stepped back onto the street. The suspicious pair trailed me out, gave Bob the once-over, and wandered off. It was a cosmetics shop I had entered, filled with only female customers.
Bob Arno and translator Mohammed
We returned to the subway station with an ad hoc interpreter. Mohammed is a law student with a summer job selling paintings at the art market on Nevsky Prospekt. We’d met him the day before. He’s soft-spoken, a bit shy, black-haired and olive-complected; a Muslim Russian from the south of the country.
He was skittish about getting involved with a criminal gang, but in the end his curiosity got the better of him, or he couldn’t resist our pressure. Off we went to the Metro station, a block away. When we found them, all five predators were in the station lobby, watching for lucrative marks.
Here’s a bit of video. It’s confusing and hard to follow, but try. You’ll see the team of six St. Petersburg pickpockets at work outside the Metro station. It’s hard to spot them all. One wears a red hat, one a white hat, and the others are pointed out with arrows. You’ll see them start out fast after a victim, then go out of view. In the second sequence, all six surround a victim, then the biggest of them crashes into his chest to delay him. Then they turn and meet beside the canal to divvy up the swag.
Mohammed’s first timid overtures were rejected with disinterest. Then he used the words “Las Vegas,” and vor, Russian for thief, and the gangsters turned to look us up and down. A moment later we had them outside, and suggested we get out of the crowd. The eight of us walked a block away and around a corner, where there was less traffic.
Four pickpocket thugs in St. Petersburg, RussiaFour pickpocket thugs in St. Petersburg, Russia
By then Mohammed had warmed them up and the gang members were smiling and curious, though not comfortable. Bob got a two-fingered grip on the big guy’s wallet and gave him a little shove from behind, neatly extracting the wallet. That’s when they relaxed half a notch. We stood around small-talking for ten minutes, but nothing of substance was discussed. They claimed they throw away credit cards instead of using or selling them, but we’re not convinced. Mohammed said their Russian was not very good. Soon a well-dressed man with a briefcase joined us. “Professional,” one of the thugs said in English, and he made a gesture for pickpocket, stroking the back of the index finger with the tip of the middle finger.
You just tried it, didn’t you!
One by one, cell phones started ringing. I think the thugs were speaking with each other. A group of tourists paraded by, and two thieves caboosed them around the corner. Our conference dispersed, but ice had been broken.
Entrance of alley behind Nevsky Prospekt
Bob and I walked Mohammed back to the art market. He led us down a street parallel to Nevsky Prospekt, then cut through a long narrow alley to the back of the art market. After saying goodbye, Bob and I headed back into the alley.
Halfway through it, two scrawny young men came running up from behind us, shouting “Police!” They flashed ID at us. “Pseudo-cops,” we thought, bandits who pretend to be police. We’re about to be robbed!…
