“I’d love you to be my partner in crime, Mr. Harvey.”
“Hell, yes!” Steve Harvey eagerly replied, “I’ve been wanting to do this my whole life!”
See Bob Arno steal from Steve Harvey on Little Big Shots Forever Young, which aired July 19, 2017. [Wait a sec—video may be slow to load.]
On the set before filming this live segment for ABC News, Bob Arno stole a wallet from one of the camera operators. The producers asked him to do it.
Bob snuck away with the wallet, brandishing it to the other nearby staff who’d gaped as the theft occurred. They were unaware of Bob’s topic—theft and scams—or at least of his skills.
Almost simultaneously, a uniformed security guard blasted into the studio—the scene of the crime—having witnessed the thief on his monitor.
“He was ready to throw your criminal butt out of our studio,” laughed host Susan Casper.
The wallet was presented to the cameraman on-air.
We did a lot of television these past few weeks, and I’m struck by the differences in studios and the effects on the interviews. The Access Hollywood studio in Burbank was full of bustling people: producers, hosts, camera operators, gaffers, powder-puffers, etc. The atmosphere was lively, jokey, fun, and efficient. Among the crew, there were winks, high-fives, and laughs, though within a sense of electric urgency: let’s get this done, but have a good time doing it.
Contrast that with KCAL’s Studio City set at KCBS. The huge set was dark and completely empty of humans, except for the two hosts. Acres of polished cement were trod only by electronic cameras, which glided silently, each trailing a thick tail of bound cords. The atmosphere was…dead. The interview was humdrum. Uninspired. Perhaps there was a party going on in the control room, I don’t know.
Same went for the KNBC Studio. Robotic cameras clicked and whirred in the darkness, rolling across the floor, rising, lowering, like ghost-spys. Their thick yellow umbilicals were, presumably, coiled by flesh-and-blood hands. Lack of human warmth leads to stilted talk, at least with a performer used to working in front of a live audience. The interview with Colleen Williams was interesting and informative, but dry.
Understandably different were the streetside interviews. Electric Playground’s adorable Miri Jedeikin obviously had a blast interviewing Bob in the heart of Hollywood, and it shows in the finished product.
The Examiner‘s Danielle Turchiano and KABC-TV’s Ric Romero did lively sidewalk interviews in which Bob was able to demonstrate on passersby—always fun and successful.
In two trips to New York City, Bob appeared twice on Fox & Friends and once on The Today Show (which I can’t find online).
Yep, we’ve been busy.
Psychology is an integral part of a good cannon’s skill-set. He must be able to read the mark. More than one good pickpocket has told us that the rush is better than a drug high (which many have the experience to compare), when he sinks his hand into a mark’s pocket and touches a wallet, even if there’s no actual extraction. Just being there—inside a complete stranger’s pocket—is a rush. Pickpockets often come up with nothing, for many reasons. The poke was lying sideways in the pocket. It was too thick. In a woman’s handbag, the zipper opening was not large enough to let the wallet slide out, The mark made a move sideways, or suddenly changed face expression (to anger or strain). Grift sense informs the pickpocket’s next move in the game.
Early this month, Germany’s RTL Television Network sent for Bambi and me for its program, Extra. Over the past six or seven years I’ve had several segments on RTL’s Extra, all with high ratings; which may explain why the network flew two people all the way from Las Vegas to do only a ten-minute spot in a one-hour news-program.
This time the assignment was different and demanding. The producer, Burkhard Kress, wanted me to steal from the public at Munich’s enormous Oktoberfest, where more than eight million people congregate over a two week period. The goal was to illustrate why pickpockets love crowds, and that Oktoberfest is a strong magnet to international cannons.
During the festival, hundreds of international pickpockets descend on Munich and practice their trade, not just on the fairgrounds, but also on public transportation, in hotel lobbies, and everywhere tipsy revelers rally—pickpocket heaven for sneak thieves. Cannons who usually operate in St. Petersburg, Bucharest, Rome, Naples, Athens, Paris, Marseilles, Barcelona, Lima, and Santiago, to mention just a few cities with a high level of whiz mob activity, come to Munich for the festival with hope of making a big kill.
My challenge was especially tough because I couldn’t operate in the same environments or locales as my criminal colleagues, and had to work with serious limitations and restrictions. First of all, there was a time issue. We had only two days for the project. That meant starting work immediately upon arrival in Munich (from Las Vegas), without being able to first scout the venues, the crowds, the hidden cameras, where the undercover cops were patrolling, and where the best spots were to extract the pokes without being caught by law enforcement.
And RTL wanted “money-shots”—all television programs seek these emotional moments. They’re what drive viewers and ratings. They make for tense television and, most important, they stop viewers from switching to other stations. It’s why programs like America’s Got Talent are actually scripted, dripping with confrontational emotion when participants are ejected from the show.
The television money-shot in pickpocketing is when the reporter asks the victim about safety, and how he or she perceives the threat of theft and cons. The questions are usually: “So how do you feel about pickpockets? Could one steal from you?” The answer, hopefully, will be a confident: “No way, I’m too aware, my stuff couldn’t be stolen.”
Packed into this two-day visit, we had scheduled camera shoots (me stealing from the crowd), interviews of me, my analysis of security at Oktoberfest, and lessons in theft-avoidance. We also needed time to transfer some of my crime footage that illustrates new pickpocket techniques relevant to Germany and its visitors and viewers. A project like this really needs five days.
We arrived at the hotel and changed into the working uniform, this time traditional lederhosen. We rigged cameras and wireless microphones, experimental wrist-rigs, and the usual button-cams. We also had to take into account the local laws, like what can be filmed with audio (privacy laws).
Next step was a briefing with the film crew to make sure everyone understood the logistics of filming thievery. Cannons will always shield the hand going into a pocket or purse with a jacket, a bag hanging sideways over the chest, or something. This allows the thief to hide his entry into the victim’s pocket, purse, or fanny-pack and the world around won’t see the extraction. My challenge was to keep my theft hidden from the vic and his friends while enabling the camera crew to film it.
I work fast, and my hands often fly lightly all over my mark. Usually, Bambi is the only one who can anticipate the item I’m after and where to point the camera. She was thrown a camera and became one of the crew.
Most of the drinking and much of the partying at Oktoberfest takes place in the many enormous beer-halls on the grounds, huge tented restaurants which are each sponsored by a different company. RTL did not receive permission for me steal inside the tents, where the crowds were dense, but the police knew that I was working with the film team at the festival. Therefore, we had to be aware of surveillance cameras and how they were monitored. Were they actively watched by humans, or was it a system that simply records everything so that officers can go back and view footage in case of an incident?
I also wanted to avoid the inebriated. Partiers were putting away six or seven one-liter mugs of prime Oktoberfest beer. Stealing from a drunk does not make for great television in my opinion—among criminal street pickpockets this is ranked at the lowest level. It’s entry level thievery and gets no respect from the whiz mobs. They call this kind of lowlife a lush worker.
I hung around a row of ATMs for a while to watch for a taschendieb or two on the lookout for good marks. A team of four caught my eye. I was itching to go up and introduce myself—talk shop. It usually takes me thirty seconds to determine in a conversation if they’re thieves or not. But there was a fly in the soup here. Oktoberfest management had hired undercover cops from Romania to look for Romanian pickpockets and these guys could have been them. My suspects spoke only Italian and one of them just a tad of English. Yes, we had fun talking, but I didn’t get the confirmation I hoped for.
One by one, a few good potential marks walked away from the ATM after cash withdrawals. I telegraphed to the film crew that I was ready to go into action and got an approving nod: “go for it.” I lifted a few wallets and we got superb money-shot reactions when we returned them. It was “in the can,” and everyone was happy.
What made this spot so successful? First and foremost, I saw where the marks placed their leathers (slang for wallets) and how thick they were. I could immediately determine the print of the poke. Translation: the four corners of the wallet and where the top of it was in relation to the top of the pocket—how deep down it was. That’s significant information because it allows the me to pick a technique of extraction: what fingers to use and where to grip. Yes, there are different methods to extract a wallet.
In an ideal scenario you want to nip the top edge with your nails and stay still while the mark moves away, he simply walks away from his property. The vic’s own motion hides the sensation of the poke sliding out. An alternative, for a good cannon, is to create a small diversion when the leather is lifted. A light brush against the legs is enough, or perhaps a more demonstrative push by a female whiz mob partner (or a stall). Each extraction need a slightly different approach and technique. Is he in motion or standing still?, how tight is the crowd around him?, and so on. Each factor counts and on top of it all, the equation changes constantly depending on my read of the mark’s face. Pickpockets call this skill—reading their marks—grift sense.
In the two days, I made several misses—as any cannon does. Yes, I had my hand in the purse or bag, but there was nothing significant to pull out. In one case, when I was about take an entire handbag from a woman sitting on a bench, I saw that she suddenly got uncomfortable with my presence. Another time a man’s wallet was too thick for me to remove smoothly. These are typical complications which all pickpockets experience.
A good cannon will seldom lift more than three or four pokes in a day due to the sheer tension involved. Some will target their marks carefully, knowing from the appearance of the mark that he or she is likely to have a generous interpretation of “pocket money,” and a high credit card limit. One wallet, when targeted like this, should translate to quite a few thousand dollars by maxing out credit cards. Identity theft is the next natural progression for a good pick. If the whiz mob is technically inclined, they garnered the PIN while the vic made a transaction at the ATM. Europe’s chip & pin cards make this harder to accomplish, but that’s another story.
We had a lot of fun in Munich and I was again able to test my slippery skills in real life scenarios. As a stage pickpocket, I find the level of tension much higher when stealing without the protection of the theater setting. Street thieves call it having heart; and that doesn’t mean having compassion for your vics. It’s the exact opposite: the ability to put your hand in a total stranger’s pocket and be emotionally unaffected by it—feeling cool under pressure. Having heart also means one must have lived at least for some time in the criminal world, and knows the consequences of being arrested and spending time in the box. Though I’ve never been arrested, I think I can still consider myself as having heart. Except, for me, it does mean having compassion for the victim.
Called in to pickpocket goodies from the massive Munich Oktoberfest crowd, Bob and I, just back from Japan to do a show for Monsanto in Las Vegas, raced to catch the last two days of the bawdy Bavarian festival. (Tokyo, Vegas, Munich in five days. Thank goodness for business class.)
Bleary-eyed, we were surprised to find the RTL TV Extra crew at the airport, cameras rolling. They whisked us straight to the heart of the party for 8 million, pausing only to slip Bob into lederhosen. Most people there wore traditional costumes: men in lederhosen, women in dirndls.
It was noon, and the revelers had been drinking since 10 a.m. Some stumbled along, supported by friends. Others sat on the ground, heads in hands. No wonder: beer is sold by the liter mug and the whole idea is to drink as much as possible. The gutters ran with pee and puke.
Right away Bob and I noticed “suspects”—probably pickpockets, in our opinion—scanning the crowds. Time was short though; Bob was supposed to steal from sober partiers. No time for thiefhunting. We stood on a grassy slope among the sick and sleeping, the singing, the happy, the tired. A man lay sprawled face down at our feet, right arm extended clutching his cellphone like a torch, like a fallen statue.
“Let me have this one,” our producer said with a wink. He bent and slipped the phone from the man’s grip. Too easy. Unable to rouse the plastered guy, we finally stuffed the phone into his back pocket and considered it safer than it had been.
Bob and I surveyed the mob, looking for likely marks. We had a to-do list of items to steal; and we hoped for victims who’d be good for television. We didn’t want the type who’d punch Bob in the face if they caught on— granted, though, they’d be great for television.
In preparation for this challenge, our special cameraman, Frank Jeroschinsky, built a fancy “wrist-cam,” a lipstick camera he strapped to Bob’s arm with a cord that ran up Bob’s sleeve and into a backpack, where the recording device was stashed. The device was meant to capture the steal as Bob’s hand entered a purse or pocket. We didn’t have the heart to tell Frank how many cameramen before him had rigged similar set-ups. Bob just ran through the tests and trials and Frank saw for himself the disappointing results.
Interesting to watch the regimented Germans let loose. As we mingled, futilely trying to blend in, we saw heaps of humanity crumpled on the ground, and those attending to them. A policeman tried to rouse a man splayed on a sidewalk. A first aid team huddled around an unconscious body. Friends supported friends as best they could.
Before Oktoberfest was over, Munich police had arrested more than 80 pickpockets. They had come from many surrounding countries, as expected. A more inviting gathering for thieves cannot be imagined. Celebrants with traveling cash flooded in from all across Europe and beyond. Flocks of Russians had flown in. Grassy parking lots were lined with hundreds of buses from Italy, Czech Republic, Spain, and more.
Expecting a flood of pickpockets from Romania, authorities had also imported a special team of Romanian police.
What struck me among all the drunk and sick and out-of-control partiers was the overall peacefulness. In two long days I didn’t see a single fight, didn’t hear shouts, insults, or curses.
RTL Television’s Extra segment was broadcast the evening of October 5 to a 27% audience share. 17% has been their maximum, so it’s considered a huge success. Although it’s not officially online, we expect to get a copy of the piece shortly. Perhaps we’ll upload it. If so, I’ll link it here.
Bob and I looked at each other in disbelief. Only we knew the incredible odds we’d just beaten. To stroll into Rome’s Termini, the main train and subway station, pick a platform, peg a pair of old men as pickpockets, position a victim, and have it all work as if to a script, in under twenty minutes, on Take One… we were flabbergasted, giggly.
The fact that the film crew’s hidden cameras captured it all was merely the cherry on top. This had been our hope and our plan, but we never dreamed we’d pull it off so quickly, if at all. Our prey were Italians; ordinary-looking, regular citizens. Not ethnic minorities, not immigrants, not identifiable outcasts. We’d begun this project for ABC 20/20 with this, the toughest challenge of them all.
Just last night, at dinner in a wonderfully touristy trattoria, investigative reporter Arnold Diaz and segment producer Glenn Ruppel had expressed their severe doubt. They wondered why ABC had allowed this frivolous endeavor, invested the time and significant expense in so improbable a venture. Hidden camera expert Jill Goldstein, serious videographer though she was, just seemed pleased to be along, on her first trip to Europe, her first trip abroad. The five of us ate an innumerable procession of courses any Italian would have pared by half, toasting luck first with Prosecco, then wine, grappa, and finally little glasses of thick, sweet limoncello.
Bob and I had worried all the previous two weeks, fretting over myriad potential obstacles. How could we be certain to lead the crew to thieves, get Arnold Diaz pickpocketed, and get it all on film? How would we find the perps in all of Rome?
Our hopes slipped a little when we first met Arnold. With his refined Latin looks and flair for fashion, he blended right in with the local Italian crowd. He didn’t look like a typical American tourist, who may as well have the stars and stripes tattooed across the forehead. Arnold didn’t look like a tourist at all; rather, he looked like a European businessman. So we gave him a five-minute makeover. We slung a backpack on him, put a guidebook in his hand, a camera around his neck, and a “wife” by his side (me!) and, poof—there he was: a tasteful tourist, ready to be ripped off.
Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Two (part-g): Research Before You Go
Bob Arno, the go-to guy on street scams, was on the NBC Weekend Today show on November 22.
He was on Fox & Friends on November 29. The video made Yahoo’s top ten of the day.
Both programs show some of our video of thieves-in-the-act, and both are examples of network news soundbite-style segments. They don’t want to know anything about why, just three minutes or so of your best stuff for ratings. Nothing to be proud of, really.
Both videos are embedded below.
Montreal, July 18—Hospital instead of curtain call for Bob Arno at the end of his performance in the televised Just For Laughs Gala, Friday night. Hosted by Craig Ferguson, the all-star line-up played to a packed house at the 2200-seat St. Denis Theatre. Performing comedians included Craig Robinson, Mike Birbiglia, Steve Byrne, Elvira Kurt, Bruce Bruce, and of course, Bob Arno.
The day before, Bob rehearsed the seven cameramen and the sound and light technicians. The theater looked spectacular. Andy Nulman was there, an old friend of Bob’s for more than 20 years.
We arrived on show night in time for makeup and a photo shoot. Then Bob cased the joint, as usual, getting a sense of the upscale audience the costly event attracts. At 7:30 or so, standing in the back of the house waiting to go on, Bob began to feel a little queasy. Something was bothering him, and it was getting worse, not better. Backstage in the wings, I had no idea.
Bob went on and did a smashing show, only a minute longer than his allowed ten. Dashing into the wings to huge applause, he ducked under the video camera waiting to tape his bumper shots. I chased Bob through the backstage maze, through the dressing room hall where 20 or more comics watching the the show on monitors burst into applause, and only caught up with him in our dressing room.
“You’re supposed to tape bumper material,” I reminded him, “it’s in the contract.”
“I can’t,” Bob said, doubled over. “I have a kidney stone.” He grimaced.
Bob Arno’s virtuoso performance was also a heart thumper. With a switch from crime to comedy, “pickpocket” Arno has gone straight but, be forewarned, he’s nobody’s straight man. He delivered a hilarious routine that left the audience running for cover, and double-checking its pockets.” —Hollywood Today.
The scene in the dressing room was bizarre. Bob and I discussed options, to the extent Bob was able to communicate at all. The door was knocked on by a procession of people, and each time I opened it, the inside handle fell off. I was irritated that I had to fit it back on each time, otherwise the door could not be opened. Meanwhile, the next comedian’s routine was blasting into the dressing room and—we could hardly believe it—he seemed to be doing a routine on kidney stones! He graphically described a urinary exam that had Bob shaking his head when I urged him to go straight to the hospital.
Meanwhile, the cameramen kept trying to interview Bob, a PA wanted me to sign off on payment, Andy Nulman was recommending hospitals, a car and driver was arranged, and I was spreading apologies.
Then Bob pulled two watches out of his pocket which, in his pain, he was too distracted to return while on stage. I gave them to Craig Ferguson, who tried to return them to their owner from stage between comedians. One watch was claimed, the other was not. Perhaps its owner left, or didn’t realize it was missing. Eventually, a woman claimed it, running up on stage and admitting it wasn’t hers, but that claiming it allowed her to get a kiss from Craig Ferguson.
Bob skipped the curtain call and slept it off. It was a rough night for him, having refused the hospital. By noon the next day, he was almost back to normal. The Montreal Gazette, in its review, bestowed “Best Act” on Bob.
Happily, we kept our early dinner reservations, then meandered slowly through the city streets, packed with Just For Laughs Festival goers. At the St. Denis Theatre another Gala show was in progress. We popped in and offered to tape the video bumpers and intros that Bob had refused to do because of his illness. Bob delivered them with energy so high it was hard to believe he had been so incapacitated 24 hours earlier.
We headed back out toward the street of festival crowds, where all the comedy stuff was happening. A giant praying mantis climbed over us, its delicate legs lifting high, head tilting, eyes flashing. We were on a perpendicular street about half a block from the thickest crowd, when suddenly there were screams ahead and panicked people scattering. I just had time to ask “what is it? what’s going on?” Then a bucket dumped on me, and on everyone around me. It was a storm the likes of which I’ve never experienced before, despite having lived in the tropics in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. One minute it was dry. The next was like standing under a waterfall. There was no cover. We crowded into a doorway, but it didn’t have a roof. Another couple squeezed in and put up an umbrella. I cozied up to them, uninvited, and got the spill from their umbrella along with the rain. We were drenched.
Watch for the 2008 Just for Laughs television show hosted by Craig Ferguson. It will be broadcast around the world. I don’t know when.
