X-ray glasses

No more Flamenco on La Rambla.

High and Dry on the Streets of Elsewhere
Chapter One, part-g, Travel Advisory—

No more Flamenco on La Rambla.
No more Flamenco on La Rambla.

Barcelona, a fusion of passion and creativity, chaos and order, where art is in every detail, is a living laboratory of street crime. It’s one of our favorite places in which to study this bizarre subculture, and it supports a great diversity of practitioners from the various branches of thievery. With patience and practice, the keen-eyed observer will be rewarded with abundant examples of pickpocketing, bag snatching, and three-shell games.

La Rambla is the marvelous Main Street of Barcelona. The crowds swirl doing La Rambla things. There is incredibly much to look at: the Dr. Seuss-like architecture of Antoni Gaudi, caricature artists at work, caged doves cooing, couples performing the tango, living statues, musicians, puppeteers, intoxicating flower shops, and tempting cafés offering tapas, paella, and sangria. One can’t help but be caught up in it all.

On duty, Bob and I saunter and prowl, observant and suspicious. It’s the height of summer and the crowds are thick as—well, thick as thieves. We’re hypertuned to inappropriate behavior; suspects pop out of the crowd as if they have TV-news graphic circles drawn around them. One of us merely has to say “ten o’clock” and the other glances slightly left and knows exactly who, of the hundreds in view, is meant.

What are those pop-art pictures called, the wallpaper-like fields of swirly pattern that, when stared at long enough finally push forward an object or scene? Stereograms, I think. Blink, and the object disappears into the repetition of the pattern. Likewise our suspects: with concentration, we force them to materialize out of sameness into a dimension all their own.

But in two ways, they easily return to the background. First, we may lose them: they’re too fast; they turn a corner; they duck into an alley we don’t want to enter; or we turn our attention elsewhere. Second, their behavior is suddenly validated: for example, a fast moving pair of men looking left and right, darting ahead of clusters, purpose in their pace and us on their tail, eventually catch up to their wives. Perfectly innocent! In Venice, in Lima, in Barcelona, we wasted energy observing the bizarre behavior of deviants who turned out to be perverts. They just wanted to rub up against women, not pick their purses. Once, we tracked a pair of plainclothes police. Sure, we follow lots of dead ends-just as directors audition endless rejects.
©copyright 2000-2008. All rights reserved. Bambi Vincent

One man

How pickpockets work
Pickpocket Luciano's fingers.
Pickpocket Luciano’s fingers.

High and Dry on the Streets of Elsewhere
Chapter One, part-f, Travel Advisory —

One man loses his wallet. It’s a small crime, a small loss, a small inconvenience. Or maybe it’s a huge loss, devastating, with trickle-down repercussions.

One man steals a wallet. Usually, he steals three to six of them each day. And so may his peers, possibly hundreds in his own city. That’s a lot of wallets, a lot of money, inconvenience, and tears. Small crime, enormous problem.

Awareness works wonders.

Bob and I are on a mission. From a pro-active angle, we teach travelers what to beware of, how theft happens, and how to protect themselves. Our jurisdiction is the world: as we roam and research, we’re informed by local law enforcement, innumerable victims, and the thieves themselves.

At the end of our second interview with Luciano, he had a query for us.

“Why do you ask these questions?”

“To help tourists avoid pickpockets.”

“But,” he deadpanned, “that will make my job harder.”

Exactly.

We also assist law enforcement. No police department has the budget to travel and gather intelligence at street level, as we do. Trends travel, as do perpetrators. As Bob and I acquire video of street thieves and con artists from Lima to Lisbon, from Barcelona to Bombay, we put together teaching tapes and show them to law enforcement agencies worldwide. Having seen our previews, cops are better-prepared when foreign M.O.s roll into town.

Even at a local level we’re able to help police forces. Rarely — or never — does standard police-issue equipment include hidden video cameras. Bob and I, who look nothing like law enforcement, are able to get in the faces of thieves-in-action, and often provide the best, if not the only, descriptions of local criminal pests. We provided photos to the Barcelona tourist police, for example, who had received numerous reports of a devilish thief who “wore shorts.” Yep. That’s all the victims could ever describe about him. The police were ecstatic when they received our shot of his mug.

We do much of our research in summer, in the height of tourist season. We put ourselves smack where the crowds are, just as the thieves do. We carry video cameras, just as the tourists do. Then it’s a game of eyes.

The tourists gawk at the sights, common sense abandoned. The thief has head bent, eyes downcast; he’s scanning pockets and purses. Bob and I stare at the thief — but not too much. We don’t want to blow our cover.

©copyright 2000-2008. All rights reserved. Bambi Vincent

Call the bunco squad

Bob Arno with Greg Ovanessian (SFPD), a NABI Director, left, and Jon Grow, Executive Director, right.
Bob Arno with Greg Ovanessian (SFPD), a NABI Director, left, and Jon Grow, Executive Director, right.
Bob Arno with Greg Ovanessian (SFPD), a NABI Director, left, and Jon Grow, Executive Director, right.

In Orlando, Bob and I attended a four-day NABI training seminar–that’s the National Association of Bunco Investigators. Don’t you love the word bunco? More on that later.

NABI members, mostly law enforcement officers, want to squelch organized crime families whose favored targets are seniors. The gangs do home repair scams, sweetheart swindles, fortune telling, home invasion burglaries, and many, many other crimes. They’re perpetrated by self-proclaimed “Travelers,” large families who make these crimes their business, know the system inside-out, and usually manage to avoid prosecution. They live largely off the grid and outside of our system, under numerous aliases, and move from city to city, state to state.

Unfortunately and all too frequently, neither victims, officers, prosecutors, nor judges see these individual complaints for what they are: massive, ongoing, organized crime. Property crimes are easily swept aside to make time for violent crime. The perps, many of whom are functionally illiterate, are wily, slippery, and even seem to enjoy the chase as a game. When arrested, they’ll often pay restitution in exchange for having charges dropped. They employ their own legal experts to get them released. They’ll pay enormous bonds and abscond–it’s just a cost of doing business. And they’ll do everything possible to avoid positive identification of their true identity and where they may be wanted. The end result is an unrecognized criminal population on the loose, free to carry out their scams and frauds perpetually.

NABI’s raison d’etre is information-sharing. And they mean enthusiastic information-sharing with whatever agency needs it–a unique attitude in the world of law enforcement, where competitive, anal-retentive agents and officers hoard every tad, shred, and iota in hopes of bagging credit for the big score. NABI maintains a database of these specific organized crime family members, complete with color photos, FBI file numbers, descriptions of crimes, relationships to other suspects, and who knows more about them. Many arrests and prosecutions are thanks to NABI’s network.

Seniors are the favored victims of these fraudsters. With our population aging rapidly and life expectancy growing, the pool of potential victims is expanding. It includes us! The same attributes that make seniors good victims from the criminals’ perspective (poor vision, mobility, hearing, memory), make them poor victims from a prosecution perspective.

Bring on the bunco squad! Do you even know the word bunco? It’s not much in use these days, even among cops. The word is about as old NABI’s founders, who are still active in the association. To me, bunco connotes tricky, clever, complicated, convoluted, non-violent con. The bunco squad in my mind, before getting to know NABI, was comical and cartoonish. The victims, I thought, were motivated by greed. This couldn’t be further from reality. Crimes can be as simple and innocent-seeming as this one.

The Bunco Investigators toss around the idea of updating their association name to something that reflects their objective in today’s terms. National Association Against Elder Crime? A name like that might work better today, but it would be sad to lose bunco. We might lose the word entirely, without NABI to keep it alive.

Regardless, their mission remains unchanged. They’re a passionate and dedicated group of individuals, all giving their time in order to help eradicate these crime families. In my experience of working with police officers around the world, I most often sense a protective culture of silence, a preference to withhold information rather than to share it with other agencies. NABI is just the opposite.
©copyright 2000-2008. All rights reserved. Bambi Vincent

An ordinary day in the center of Rome

"The Heaven-to-Hell-Express." Bus 64, in Rome, travels between the Vatican and and the Termini bus station. It carries a dynamic mix of clergy, tourists, and pickpockets.

High and Dry on the Streets of Elsewhere
Chapter One, part-e, Travel Advisory —

"The Heaven-to-Hell-Express." Bus 64, in Rome, travels between the Vatican and and the Termini bus station. It carries a dynamic mix of clergy, tourists, and pickpockets.
“The Heaven-to-Hell-Express.” Bus 64, in Rome, travels between the Vatican and and the Termini bus station. It carries a dynamic mix of clergy, tourists, and pickpockets.

A somber crowd was gathered outside the police station. While Bob helped a Japanese tourist file a report inside, I interviewed the congregation of victims.
Mary from Akron was waiting with her daughter while her husband told his sad story upstairs. Her husband’s wallet had been stolen on bus 64. Mary still had her cash and credit cards, so she was rather jolly about the loss. The family was scheduled to go home the next day, anyway.

“We’d been warned about these nuisance kids,” Mary admitted, “but my husband is just too kind. He knew they were close but he wouldn’t shoo them away. Poor Wilma here, though, she never had a chance.”

Wilma from Tampa had just arrived that morning. She and her husband had flown into Rome and taken the airport express train to the city. They’d been hit at the airport train station.

“This was no kid!” Wilma spat out angrily. “It was a man, a regular Italian man.”

“Take it easy, honey,” Mary patted Wilma on the back.

“He lifted my husband’s suitcase onto the train for us, then came back down to get mine. Before I could even thank him he was gone.”

Wilma had fresh tears in her eyes. Mary rubbed and patted her arm.

“In that instant, he got the wallet from my husband’s pocket and the purse from my tote bag. He got all our money, all our credit cards, our airline tickets home, and our passports.” Wilma was crying now. “We have nothing,” she whimpered, “not even the name of our hotel.”

“Sure you do, sweetheart,” Mary soothed her. “It’s going to be all right. I gave her $100,” Mary explained to me. “They had absolutely nothing.”

These two women had only just met, here at the police station half an hour ago. Now they were sisters of misfortune.

I turned to two young men who had been silently slumped against their backpacks, listening.

“They got him on the bus, too.” the blond one said. He sounded like a Swede.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“In the back,” the other said.

“I mean, where was the bus?”

“Oh. Bus 64, like her. At the Vatican.”

“And you guys?” Another family had appeared.

“Outside the Coliseum.”
©copyright 2000-2008. All rights reserved. Bambi Vincent

Bottomfeeders of the criminal hierarchy

Luciano Barattolo, a pickpocket who works on trams and buses.

High and Dry on the Streets of Elsewhere
Chapter One, part-c, Travel Advisory

Luciano Barattolo, a pickpocket who works on trams and buses.
Luciano Barattolo, a pickpocket who works on trams and buses.

Bob and I hit the ground and I squinted at the gang.

“Luciano!” I said to one of the culprits as the tram trundled off. I recognized him as a pickpocket we’d interviewed four years ago.

“No, no Luciano,” he said, shaking his head. He backed away.

“Si, Luciano Barattolo, I remember you.” Luciano bent and fiddled with a window squeegee in a bucket of water abandoned on the median strip. He removed the dripping squeegee and touched it to the toe of each of his shoes. I got ready for a blast of filthy water; I was sure he was going to fling it at us.

Head still bent, he peeked up at me through the corner of his eye, dropped the squeegee, and bolted.

After more than a decade prowling city streets around the world, we’d become accustomed to finding known criminals freely plying their trade right out in the open. Here was Luciano, still out lifting wallets on trams despite police and public awareness of him. You’d think he’d be put away by now.

It’s a contentious political issue: law enforcement budget versus taxes, penal code versus perpetrator’s rights, unemployment, immigration. Same story in most of the world’s major cities and, therefore, street thieves abound, free to prey on the weakest, richest resource: the tourist. From a busy prosecutor’s perspective, or an overworked judge’s, or even an underpaid beat cop’s, pickpocketing is a pretty insignificant issue. Real bad guys are on the loose: murderers, kidnappers, rapists, drug-pushers. How much of a police force should be diverted to snag the bottomfeeders of the criminal hierarchy?

Most countries blame illegal immigrants from poorer nations nearby. “We can’t get rid of them,” said Inspector D’Amore Vincenzo, a frustrated policeman in Milan, Italy. “When they’re caught without work cards, we give them 15 days to leave the country. Then they are released and what happens? They just don’t leave! And if they have no papers, no passports, the countries they come from will not accept the repatriation of these people.”

The problem may seem small. One man loses his wallet, his money, his driver’s license, his credit cards. So what? But it’s not one man. In Westminster–that’s one small district of London–768 cases of pickpocketing were recorded in June 2002. That’s just June. Just one small section of the city of London. And only the reported incidents. How many victims did not file a report? And by the way, the figure doesn’t include the 142 bag snatches recorded in the same district in the same period.

Luciano paused a couple blocks away, having finally dredged up the memory of us from four years ago. He was 49 now, but still looked 30. He raised his children on a career of pickpocketing, and now was spoiling five grandchildren. Over lunch, he told us how he and his partners used legal loopholes to stay in the game.

“If the police catch us with a tool, they are angry and beat us up. If we don’t have a tool and they see us they just say …˜leave, get out of here.'”

“What’s a tool?”

“A razor blade, for example. Or some use long tweezers to slip into a back pocket.” Luciano’s eyes scanned the sidewalk café for listening ears. “A scissors is a good tool,” he whispered. “A scissors is okay to carry. With scissors I can cut a pocket and let the wallet fall into my hand.”

Luciano makes it sound easy. He and his ilk hit on moving targets in tight spaces, then fade away into churning crowds. It’s a universal style. Police throw up their hands. “We must see the hand in the pocket!” they cry. “We have only six in our squad for all the city.” “Our officers don’t know what to look for.” “It’s impossible!”

The pickpockets aren’t about to stop.

“I started doing it to eat, to get food, because there were no jobs. Now it’s all I know,” Luciano told us. Others steal to support drug problems, or have no legal status to work, or simply believe in taking what they want.
©copyright 2000-2008. All rights reserved. Bambi Vincent

Thievery, connery, scamdom, and swindlehood

An opposing gang of pickpockets in St. Petersburg
Four pickpockets in Russia greet Bob, whose back is to the camera.
Four pickpockets in Russia greet Bob, whose back is to the camera.

High and Dry on the Streets of Elsewhere
Chapter One, part-b, Travel Advisory

If law enforcement can’t turn the trend, perhaps Bob and I can. Grandiose vision? As a two-person army out to fight street crime, we wouldn’t have a chance, we’d be laughable. But we’re not out to stop the thieves. We’re here to educate the public. We’ll turn the tide of loss from the back end. We also spread our knowledge base of current trends in thievery among the law enforcement agencies that deal with tourist crime. But it’s the ground level dissemination of information that has the greatest effect. We may be steering the horse by the tail, but we know it works.

Bob has spent a lifetime studying scammers, thieves, and con artists and their wicked ways. From Pakistan in the sixties, where leper pickpockets used emotions—fear and revulsion—as a means to their ends, to shortchangers in Vietnam, to destitute orphans in Peru, to modern day rogues in the capital cities of Europe and America, he has explored their methods and motivations.

Unlike police, criminologists, psychologists, or other researchers, Bob communicates with street thieves in their language; he can talk the talk and walk the walk because he is a thief himself. Bob is a thief who steals on stage and always returns what he takes. The techniques he learns from the thieves themselves he incorporates into his stage presentations. With the benefit of Bob’s backdoor perspective, we will give you the thief’s-eye version of thievery, connery, scamdom, and swindlehood; and more important, how to avoid becoming an unwilling participant.
©copyright 2000-2008. All rights reserved. Bambi Vincent

Get your * hand out of my pocket!

Get your hand out of my pocket!
Get your hand out of my pocket!
Four pickpockets at work on a crowded tram.

“Hey! Hey! Hey! Get your fucking hand out of my pocket! You try to steal my wallet again and I’ll kill you!” The would-be victim slapped away the comforting hand of a middle-aged local. “No, you’re with him! I’m gonna call the cops.”

The victim, an American man, vocalized his outrage as the tram lurched and squealed along its track. His opponents melted into the crowd, impossible to discern from the legitimate passengers. Despite the team’s intricate choreography and precise techniques, they’d seemed as innocent and invisible as a white rabbit in a cotton harvest: beyond suspicion, even as they surrounded their mark. No one would detect the four functionaries of this tactical unit: the dip, his two blockers, and his controller. Not derelict losers, they looked like businessmen, like students, like men with respectable jobs.

Get your hand out of my pocket!

The dip carried a jacket. His thieving hand worked concealed beneath it, first fanning the tourist, a feather-like pat-down designed to locate the leather, the wallet. The blockers positioned the mark, turning him, impeding his progress, expertly taking advantage of the physical contact natural in any tight crowd. Leaning into him, they caused his distraction, subtly directing his attention away from the dip’s delicate work. A few steps away, the controller watched for cops and overly alert bystanders. Of the four, he alone was shifty-eyed. When the victim exploded, it was the controller who stepped in to defuse the situation. If it hadn’t been for a sudden sway of the tram, the team would have succeeded, as they do in thirty-five percent of their efforts.

Now, busted, they pushed through the standing crowd toward the doors at the other end of the tram. At the first stop, the thieves made their escape. Bob and I hopped off after them.

This scene, in endless permutations, is repeated thousands of times every day. The victim of choice is the tourist, rich beyond reason in the eyes of thieves, who employ methods as subtle as stealth and as brutal as mugging to effect the transfer of wealth. Theft from tourists is on the rise and, unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly violent, more and more organized, and harder than ever to fight.

Excerpt from High and Dry on the Streets of Elsewhere
Chapter One, part-a, Travel Advisory

©copyright 2000-present. All rights reserved. Bambi Vincent

The travel industry’s dirty little secret

travel industry’s dirty little secret
travel industry’s dirty little secret
Bambi squashed on a train

Bob and I contend that the crimes of street thieves, so often dubbed “petty,” are not that at all. First, tally the sheer number of them, particularly in favorite tourist cities: hundreds of incidents per day are reported to police. How many go unreported? Our research indicates that numbers are two or three times greater. Secondly, consider the personal and practical impact on victims. The monetary loss, the complications of replacing documents, the fear of further repercussions such as replication of identity, all these add up to an experience that isn’t soon forgotten. Add to that the indirect costs and hours required by law enforcement, not to mention diverting officers from more serious work, plus costs involved in prosecuting and jailing these so-called petty thieves.

The travel industry’s dirty little secret

Pickpockets and property theft are the travel industry’s dirty little secret. Understandably, no one wants to talk about them. Not the travel magazines with advertisers to placate, not the boards of tourism with countries to promote, not travel agencies or packagers with clients to enthuse, or cruise lines with a carefree ambiance to emphasize. And why should they? It’s just a petty crime.

Who is to reveal the status quo but a stage-stealing Swede and his fancy accessory?

Because it represents our passion, as well as an integral part of our career, we’ll continue to skulk underground and pound the pavement. Sometimes though, on sweltering trains so crowded I’m pressed like a daisy in a dictionary, I’ll question our endeavors and the gritty reality of mingling with outlaws. Then we’ll catch a thief. We’ll capture a slick steal on tape, which will later be used to illustrate our presentations to the public and help train police departments. We’ll discover some new artifice, an old trick twisted to exploit the moment. And that will be our satisfaction.

Clever Travel Companions men's pickpocket-proof underwear; The travel industry's dirty little secret
Photo: clevertravelcompanion.com

As you’ll learn in our book, serious reductions in these crimes will not be due to law enforcement, no disrespect to them. It will be through travelers’ smarter stashing and raised awareness. Personal security is an art, not a science. Once you know the risks, you can adjust your awareness and the level of your security precautions. Thus prepared, you’ll turn your travel concerns into travel confidence.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Preface

© Copyright 2008-present Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

Thieves categorized

Pickpocket hand
Pickpocket hand; thieves categorized
A pickpocket’s hand

“Criminals are born, not made. Delinquency is a physiological abnormality.” So said Cesare Lombroso, Italian professor of forensic medicine and psychology, in 1875. After meticulous measurements as a sort of computerless biometrics, he described “the delinquent” as a “precise anthropological type” who could be recognized by his physical attributes. If only! From our descriptions and photos, you’ll see that rogues range from infants to the elderly, from the shifty-eyed to the doe-eyed. But for their inappropriate behavior and possibly a telltale “prop,” they’re all but impossible to pick out of a crowd.

Thieves categorized

Opportunists

Their modus operandi vary tremendously, too, and have become the basis for my own classification of street thieves. Those in the largest category, the opportunists, require a fool for a “mark.” That may sound a bit harsh, but opportunists are looking for an invitation to steal. Give them a bit of a challenge and you needn’t be their victim. They’re quick to distinguish the vigilant from the vulnerable.

Strategists

Thieves in my next category, the strategists, are also easy to thwart. They create their own opportunities, and make participants of their victims. You, the savvy traveler, will simply refuse to participate.

Con Artists

Con artists make up my third category. To these, the victim willingly gives money for supposed value. But the victim here is driven by greed. He’s looking for a windfall, a deal too good to be true, inexplicable treasure fallen from heaven. For this victim, greed trumps reason and leads to loss.

Muggers

I do not mention muggers. These are terrorist thieves who use violence or the threat of violence. Some are armed, or pretend to be armed, equally frightening to the victim. They’re crude, smash-and-grab desperadoes whose advantages are speed and isolation. We can only advise trying to avoid them by staying out of dark, isolated, and dangerous areas. Ask locals about no-go zones. We also recommend keeping easy “give-up” cash in your pocket, and submitting to their demands, whatever they are. Never resist a mugger.

For examples and methods, see Pickpockets, Con Artists, Scammers, and Travel.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Preface, part-c

© Copyright 2008-2011 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

Consorting with thieves

Yes, the pickpocket's arm is around me.
Yes, the pickpocket\’s arm is around me.

Preface, part-b, Travel Advisory

I tried to imagine the scenario: Kharem would slip his fingers into the pocket of some hapless tourist and we’d surround him with cameras and complicity. Would we root for his success? Applaud afterwards? A few days earlier, I was filming Kharem as he tried to steal from three different individuals. How was that any different? I hadn’t realized it was Kharem, but I’d certainly recognized the pursuit of purloinery.

At our shows and lectures, audience members occasionally ask us if we stop pickpockets before they actually take something. Or they ask why we don’t shout out and warn potential victims. We squirm while defending ourselves because we do feel bad about letting it happen—or possibly happen—when we might have saved someone the money and trouble involved with the loss of a wallet.

But over the years we’ve received thanks from thousands of people: those who are now aware and informed and travel with confidence, and those who have foiled thieves after having seen us. The footage that Bob and I collect is seen by hundreds of thousands of people, millions when you count television, and it is shown not as entertainment, but as prophylactic.

We’re not entirely comfortable speaking respectfully to known thieves, laughing with them, and pretending to be friends with them. Respect, though, is what we believe opened Kharem to us. When we ask ourselves why he spoke with us, why he demonstrated his criminal craft, why he revealed his outlaw guts, we come to only one conclusion. We believe he treasured our attention and respect. He reveled in it. He blossomed in it.

I can think of a sappier story if you want the mawkish plot of a liberal: lonely, impoverished, immigrant outcast who lacks documents, education, and job skills is reduced to robbing tourists for his very survival. No family, no friends, no future, no reason to care what happens. A sensitive, poetic fatalist. Until his tragic trajectory is diverted by an angel dropping out of the sky in the shape of a filmmaker.

You think?

Nonsense.

Neither did he talk for money.
©copyright 2000-2008. All rights reserved. Bambi Vincent