A typical ATM skimmer scam
A reader wrote of an ATM experience which, soon after, led to $9,000 in fraudulent withdrawals. He was abroad, but this happens at ATMs…
The flower gift lift—Part 3 of 3
The Offer of a Flower is a Foil for Filching Palma de Mallorca, Spain— Bob and I trailed a trio of young women through…
The flower gift lift—Part 2 of 3
Palma de Mallorca, Spain— Thirty to forty women practice this form of filching every day in Palma. They linger where the tourists are: around…
The flower gift lift
Pickpockets with flowers Palma de Mallorca, Spain— She looks like your grandmother—possibly even your great-grandmother. With a gap-toothed smile, she offers you a single…
Shoulder-surfers and pseudo-cops in Sweden
I want to wail even in Sweden, because the country has long been perceived as enjoying a relatively low crime rate. And it did….
Exchanging foreign currency
You can save up to 20% when you change money abroad if you shop around. Maybe more. I found myself in Rome recently, with…
Fake police, aka Pseudo-Cops
In Bangkok, seemingly corrupt police are extorting large sums from foreign visitors. In South Africa, pseudo-cops are stopping drivers and pedestrians, requesting wallets in…
Bangkok airport scam and fake police
We good citizens are trained from an early age to respect authority. It’s not easy to ask a uniformed policeman for identification, or even…
Hotel oddity #2
We had a large and beautiful room at the Corinthia Lisboa Hotel in Lisbon. The business hotel’s casual restaurant, Tipico, is excellent, and features…
Kill bed bugs with heat
Bed bugs, we read, are living in hotels everywhere, dining on us. As a frequent hotel guest (200+ days a year for 16 years)…
A pudding
After twenty years of baking this decadent dessert, which I’ve called by a name I’m quite fond of, I must finally, if fleetingly, commit…
The mosaic sidewalks of Portugal
I came across some calceteiros in the process of creating the gorgeous Portuguese mosaic sidewalks. In time, shoes polish the mosaics to a slippery…
Skimmers and credit card fraud (more)
Skimmers, officially called magnetic card readers, capture the data on a card’s magnetic strip. Exactly what information is that? Credit and debit cards have…
High-tech identity theft today
…¢ Identity theft is now the number one crime in the world. …¢ Las Vegas is number one in the U.S. for ID theft;…
Traveling with luggage
I’m sure it sounds obsessive to mention the necessity of onboard watchfulness when you fly. The likelihood of theft while on an aircraft is…
Skimmers for credit card fraud
A little background, as reference for my next post: A skimmer is a battery-operated device smaller than a deck of cards with a slot…
ID theft buffet
A former mortgage broker put 40 boxes of customers’ personal information into a Las Vegas dumpster. It was December 2006, but we all knew…
Street crime in Lisbon
Thieves are thick on Lisbon’s two main tourist trams, 15 and 28. Within five minutes of arriving at a tram stop for #28, we’d…
Drink-drugging on the rise
Drink-drugging as a means to theft and/or sex is not new, but on the rise. It’s increasing in Colombia and known to be an…
Hotel security in the hands of housekeeping staff
Loot ‘n scoot: Through my police friends, I learned of another devious M.O. resulting in theft from hotel rooms. The thief simply poses as…
At the Microsoft conference in Slovenia
The Slovene driver sped along the autostrade, disco crackling on the radio, fast-chomping gum, taking and making phone calls as if he runs another…
Street crime in Buenos Aires
When my friend, Stephen Kane, described what he witnessed on a recent afternoon in Buenos Aires, I begged him to write it down for…
Small pleasures on the road
A travel snafu brought us to Homer, Alaska, where the best joint in town is the Bidarka Inn. Population 5,454; minus children, that would…
Commercial flight; no security
We flew from Anchorage to Homer on Alaska Airlines flight 4878, operated by ERA Aviation. No TSA. No screening; none at all. Liquids? Okay!…
Sloppy business at UPS
Four days away from an international trip and Bob and I have no passports. Scary. They were perfectly good and valid still for five…
Nigerian Nightmare
The moment Michael Griffith turned his back, his wife let out a bloodcurdling scream. He whipped around to see Nancy jumping up and down,…
Scams at restaurant tables
A restaurant table is a good place to be had. The latest in low-tech scams happened last month in Hoboken, NJ, when a man…
How to catch a lizard
While in Africa with cousin Ty, he showed me a jury-rigged lizard catcher he made from a long, pliable twig and a piece of…
Social engineering—is it time to curtail trust?
A couple of scumbags have been casing neighborhoods in Las Vegas, preying on elders. They chat up residents, pretending to be a former resident…
Humor in the book business
Is it humorous, or just pathetic? I got a letter in the mail this week from a literary agent. His letter was dated and…