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This is The Art of Charm.
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Welcome to The Art of Charm, I m Jordan Harbinger.
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Looking forward to meeting you here at AOC.
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Today we re talking with professor of pickpocketry, Bob Arno.
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We re gonna learn about tricks of the trade, how the psychology of pickpocketing actually works, and how to spot and catch thieves for ourselves.
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So enjoy this one with Bob Arno.
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You re working with Europol.
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You probably have worked with a lot of law enforcement agencies, I would imagine.
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Well, yes, you know, a couple maybe each year.
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It varies.
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It goes up and down in intensity and locations and all of that.
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There are no precise ground rules other than that.
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I think I m one of the few who is doing this.
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So it s a little weird until you understand why and my passion and then it becomes very clear.
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Well, tell us what you do in one sentence, and we ll extrapolate your passion and everything from there.
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Yeah, I am a good stage pickpocket, and because I have done this for maybe 40 years, I can also see who is a thief in the street.
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And because of that quality, I can work with law enforcement.
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That s great.
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So tell us what a stage pickpocket is.
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It s pretty clear, but tell us anyway.
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A stage pickpocket really is not that exciting, except for the people who sit in the audience, not for the guy who is doing it on stage.
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It s like bicycling.
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Once you ve learned to steal a wallet or a tie or a watch,
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The moves are pretty much repetitive, but it basically means I go out in the audience and I am presented maybe as a hoax speaker.
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It could be they say, here s the chef for the evening, or here s the man who is going to talk about the mathematics at the convention.
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And then as I start out, I walk through, I shake hands with people, I steal, I come up on stage, and then I let the cat out of the bag.
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I revealed that I was a pickpocket.
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People laugh, have a good time.
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And then from there I proceed to give them reality, which means I show them how credit card fraud is done, and how people steal your bag or your phone, and what you can do not to be a victim.
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Excellent, and that sounds like a lot of fun.
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People think you re some normal dude, they re not on the lookout, and then you walk through and say hi to everybody, and you go up and say, did anybody lose a Rolex, did anybody lose a wallet, did anybody lose a bra, or whatever.
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Not that I can steal everything.
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The bra, I leave to you, but the Rolex actually is not something that I can steal.
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There are people who can steal a Rolex, but since you actually break the pin where the strap meets the foundation of the watch, only a street pickpocket can steal a watch because to some extent, you destroy it a little bit.
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Right, it s not funny when you get your watch back and you ve got to take it in and it s $300 to have it fixed.
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You ve got it.
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A service of a Rolex usually costs more than most people pay for a new one.
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Right.
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No, I ve heard.
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I heard if something inside it breaks, it s like a grand.
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It s a start.
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For them to open it up or whatever, it s like that much money.
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Well you know the weakest part of a strap is actually where the two straps meet.
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I mean depending on whether it s a metal one that comes across where you have to kind of move it over your hand or whether it opens up with a pin.
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So all of those moves varies from watch to watch to watch.
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And the majority of the watches you can steal without ruining anything, but a Rolex is a very sturdy and a very strong watch.
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And when the thieves actually steal it, they grab your hand in a kind of a mugging scenario.
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But by the time you realize something, they re back on a scooter and they take off and you know, they re 20 yards away.
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Right right exactly interesting so that there s one of the major differences I would imagine between what s essentially kind of a magic show type of performance versus actual thievery.
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Well, in my particular case, doing a stage pickpocketing, which has been my bread and butter for many years.
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It s not so much nowadays, since now I do more about warning and training law enforcement.
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But in the heyday of my career, which was in Las Vegas for about 20 years on some of those big stages, it got a little repetitive and, you know, doing the same thing and the contract where you had to work year after year and you have very little time off.
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So that s very nice when you start out because Las Vegas is what most entertainers want to cap their career.
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However, stage pickpocketing, as I said, it is unique.
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There are very few people who are doing it, so you get a lot of laughter from it.
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But as one continues and grows and learns more and more, it gets more intriguing how a criminal thinks and how one can teach the world
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all of this sophistication, how to, I guess, put the pin in the wheel rolling forward and make it difficult for the bad guys.
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Yes, and I definitely want to get into that psychology, but first, how did you get interested in this?
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I mean, you re not a criminal, right?
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Well, you re absolutely right.
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Of course, the majority of people, when they start seeing me work or if they see the show, for example, they will think that I must have a background way back
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in crime in some shape or form.
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You know, the old Fagan story where an older guy gets some young people to steal on behalf.
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And I have to tell you that that type or that format still exists, meaning there are Romanian gypsy kings who live in very fine mansions and they do go out in Bulgaria and Romania and they kind of buy or lease or rent, whatever word you want to use,
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young people, young girls, usually 14 to 15, they hire them, they train them to do pickpocketing, and then they send them in gangs into Paris and Rome and different cities in Europe.
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But in my case, no, I don t have that background.
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I would love to tell you an exotic anecdote and say I went clean by the time I was 19.
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But that s not the case.
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You hear an accent.
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And the reason for that is I was born in Sweden.
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I took an interest in this as a teenager.
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There happened to be a very famous pamphlet, I would say, or shall we say an exclusive little book that magicians could buy in the 50s and they had kind of a separate insert.
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So you bought the folder for this book and then you decided whether you want card sharks or throwing a dice in a cheating way or doing a pickpocketing trick.
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They only taught one particular trick and i was a teenager at the time and i bought this thing and it floored me so i started doing this back in sweden where i was born and i got a tremendous reaction and as a teenager i guess you could say
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the same way as a nerd today get hip on doing hacking on a computer.
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I, as a nerd, as a sort of a comedy magician as a teenager, I got attention from that and it started a road on this, you know, forward road on researching crime.
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My father was a judge, so the communication or the chats around the table was very often about how a thief never, or a criminal, never fesses up.
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They always have an excuse somehow.
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So I hitchhiked across Europe, performing in very small places and went out in the streets of Paris and London and saw the real thieves.
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I couldn t connect with them.
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I could watch a little bit and I could get the foundation.
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But it took me about three, four years before I had, I would say, a performance show where I could start working professionally week after week after week.
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Interesting, so yeah, this was kind of like, oh my gosh, if I learn how to steal enough wallets, I might get a girlfriend.
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You don t learn how to steal a wallet in the beginning.
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What do you start with?
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In the beginning of a show, it wasn t so important when I was in my early 20s, I happened to get a booking to Pakistan, of all places, in Karachi, and it was basically a pseudo joint just for the girls to dance around and for the men to come and maybe
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hook up with them and buy them drinks in the bar.
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And then they have little crappy shows.
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And I happen to be one of them.
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I was hired out of London, where the owner of this hotel, it was called Cable Beach Hotel in Karachi, that was my first really professional booking of any magnitude.
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But in those years, I couldn t steal a wallet, and I wasn t attempting to because I felt it was dangerous.
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People would come back and say, you know, there was actually $200 here in my wallet, and now there s only 50.
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Give me the other 150.
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So I was scared about this scenario.
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So I took all kinds of other things, you know, eyeglass cases and ties and belts and things.
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But it took me, I would say, about 10 years before I started to slide the wallet in.
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and I would return it on stage.
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So while the person was up on stage, there wasn t going to be any bickering where he said, well, you know, there was more in it.
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Now I can go out in the audience and I can steal it while I m in the room, not up on stage.
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And I have enough of a name, I guess a clout where there isn t going to be an argument because I have respect from from the crowd.
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Sure.
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Now you teach law enforcement how to catch thieves.
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What types of thieves do you specialize in?
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I assume pickpockets.
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And what are you looking for?
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Obviously, I don t talk about burglary and things of that nature.
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But on the other hand, I guess all crime, especially when it comes to what we would call diversion crime, where there is a bit of psychology in the beginning, but you know, a sheer mugging is a psychopath or a guy who has hopped up on drugs.
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It s a desperate individual or it s a sick individual.
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or it s an under the influence individual.
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There is very little skills involved, while as other type of crime and certainly a certain type of burglary involve some psychology or research weaknesses of the property, the type of keys involved, are the people home or not home, what type of alarm system.
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So there s a skill factor there.
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And yes, I am involved to some extent in the research and training in that area.
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But of course,
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one has to separate the two individuals who do this type of crime, meaning that the psychopath was using sheer brute force.
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And a pickpocket is a very different animal.
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They do not want confrontation.
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And when they are apprehended with police nine times out of 10, they don t make any resistance.
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They don t start fight.
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They just very meekly put their hands out and had the cuffs put on them, then go up in front of a judge.
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That s not to say that they are not strong inside or proud of their art and so forth.
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It s just that they realize they can get away with a shorter sentence if they don t have any resistance.
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A resistance means that you might be a career criminal and you get a longer sentence.
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So what we teach is the observation, meaning what is it that a police should observe before the crime goes down.
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So if you take a hotel lobby or an airport, and there are many locations, the bottom line is behavior, mannerism, interaction between the criminals, the format of a group of criminals, how they move in unison.
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Okay, so can you get into some detail about that?
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Our audience is pretty educated on the psychology, we re talking about body language a lot, so can we look at really specific details?
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Great.
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Absolutely.
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You know, for a start, I have to tell you that the majority of law enforcement, regardless of what detail you might be working in, they stay for maybe three to four years in one particular area, and then in order to climb on a career,
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they sort of move sideways, not necessarily always straight up.
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And that means that they re not necessarily experts at each.
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So if you take hacking, for example, of a credit card, and the way the criminals get to the numbers, that takes a very special research and teams and education to catch that type of a criminal.
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My point here is that a regular police officer, passionate as he is about catching a criminal, may not have enough experience to have seen all the very, very small signs.
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And I can give you a very perfect example of this.
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I, a few days ago, attended and spoke at a conference in Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, called Decepticon 2015.
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And that was for three days, and it was only about how deception, how difficult it is to read.
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And so professors around the world, of course, are looking for this when they try and help law enforcement to catch terrorists or for that matter, any bad guys.
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We want to know before it goes down.
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Is there a certain behavior if you have someone you suspect
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and you have a camera pointed at them or you listen to the word pitch or the speed by which they spit out words or you ask certain questions and you want to see how fast they move in order to determine whether or not they re lying and if they are lying then you know how long will it take to break them to find out who are their associates and so forth.
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the art of actually understanding how people behave is sort of complex.
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But in my case, I break it down by talking about the different groups of pickpockets.
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And by that, I mean, the level of sophistication.
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So if you take young
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shall we say, Roma.
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Roma is the proper term for gypsy pickpockets, since the word gypsy isn t really politically correct anymore.
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So the Roma pickpockets are easy to spot in terms of their brazen and how they behave and how they interact.
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They re quite colorful, sometimes in clothes, and they re not shy about what they re doing.
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And the reason for that is that they usually
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work until they are 18 and if you apprehend someone up to the age of 18 you can t really arrest them for any long sentence and so the people who steer them know that.
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Now the next level of pickpocketing could be two young people who are working together not maybe being in the game for too long
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And they may have simply just an overcoat over there or a jacket over their arm to shield the actually extraction.
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So for a police to apprehend someone, you basically should see the theft going down.
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Otherwise, the thief is going to say, well, it wasn t me.
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It was the person right beside.
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And the judge is going to say to the police, well, are you absolutely 100 percent certain
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and that the man in front of me is the one who stole that iPhone out of the bag from the lady.
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And the police is going to answer back, well, he looked like it, and I think he did.
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I m almost certain, but I m not 100% certain.
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So when you have scenarios like that, they want to hide the extraction.
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And they do that with a soft cap or a soft messenger bag that they have sideways over them, or a jacket.
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So when you wanna train law enforcement, that might be the first thing.
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But that s not enough.
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Of course, there s gonna be many, many other small signs, because the better the thieves are, the more they know that the police are looking for just these type of traits.
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Right, they ve gotta learn how to conceal it.
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So not just getting good at the thievery, but getting good at concealing the thievery.
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That s right.
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And that might mean, for example, that if you take breakfast thieves that operate in hotels in the restaurant when they serve the breakfast and you know, there s so much action going on that it could be maybe 60 people at the same time.
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So for someone who is on a monitor surveillance cameras looking at the action inside a breakfast area where the guys are sculpting for someone who puts a laptop bag down on the floor or a lady puts a handbag on the chair while she turns around and gets another glass of orange juice.
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You want to look for people, therefore, who are moving about or have a face reaction that doesn t fit into the rest of the scene.
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And that means a certain seriousness and possibly looking at a partner.
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And that may sound strange to you looking for a partner, but there is a certain amount of interaction.
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And someone who is about to steal in the next five minutes isn t going to laugh.
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He s not gonna be relaxed in his face.
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So there is a certain seriousness and observation glancing back and forth.
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The face turns at certain degrees.
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Maybe they re managing their nerves because they re about to make a move, something like that where they re not calm.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah.
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Correct.
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Therefore, you know, when we observe these pickpockets, we can categorize them.
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And if they hide their tools, that means that they may have a family
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pack where they have a selfie stick, for example.
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And that may sound strange to you, a selfie stick in a money pack.
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But if a lady s handbag is on the floor, if you open up the selfie stick and turn, sit with your back towards the victim and open it up, you can drag the bag on the floor
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maybe 60 inches over to your own foot and then move it over and then you collapse the stick and you put it right back into your fanny pack.
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If you re in front of a judge, you can always claim that you had a selfie stick for the purpose of taking photos.
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So they may have also a soft nylon or mesh bag inside that bag.
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So these are the little small details that at the first level, which what I would call not terribly sophisticated.
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Now back to Bob Arno.
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So if you teach law enforcement to look for that, the next level I would say of thieves is going to find the countermeasures like, hey, I don t need little razor blades to slash open backpacks.
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I don t need a switchblade to defend myself when I get caught.
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I ve got a selfie stick and a fanny pack, which is a fashion crime but not necessarily a real crime.
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and you can always tell the judge, hey, this is just normal stuff.
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I m not out to steal or something like that.
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You can make it look a little bit more like an accident.
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Then, of course, it becomes a cat and mouse game between law enforcement and thievery.
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What are the more sophisticated thieves doing?
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Well, the higher up they get on the food chain, the more they work in groups.
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And that means that there are several members in this group, and they all have a very specific choreographed position and duty and what they have to do.
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But since they are in a group, law enforcement, of course, are looking for a group of three people or a group of four people that seem to work a move in tandem or choreographed together.
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And if they were very close, let s say within six yards of each other, and that might be the way they work in Italy.
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And there s a reason for why they can get away with that in Italy.
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It has to do with the prison system.
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There s only so much sentence.
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And to some extent, law enforcement feels that if a tourist lose something, it s a stupid, you know, it s a stupidity tax, basically.
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And they can t lock up everyone because they need a jail for other things.
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And the tax system doesn t permit to build more prisons.
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So therefore, that particular country, you don t see tremendously sophisticated thieves.
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But there are other countries where you do see them.
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And just to give you an example of something high up the food chain would be for Polish pickpockets that are exceptionally well dressed.
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And if you were
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If you were looking at them at the Gare de Lyon platform in Paris or in Las Vegas in a casino, you would not recognize that there is anything shabby or that they have criminal intent.
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They will look just as smart, trendy, and cool as anything else.
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possibly even more cool than the majority of our American tourists in Las Vegas.
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They might be dressed straight out of Milano since they probably have worked there for two weeks every year.
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They will go to certain car races and they will go to Monte Carlo for a race and a horse race in Ascot in England and so forth.
2
SPEAKER_00
They travel the circuit and they do that because there s a lot of money at those particular sporting events.
2
SPEAKER_00
but they are not close to each other.
2
SPEAKER_00
They stay much further away, probably around 40 yards, and they don t look at each other.
2
SPEAKER_00
So meaning one may only look at one of their members of four, and that guy looks at somebody else.
2
SPEAKER_00
So when they do move, they don t have to look at the leader, they do have
2
SPEAKER_00
have a controller guy who sort of is in charge, but the interaction is sophisticated.
2
SPEAKER_00
And they are therefore hard for the camera to spot.
2
SPEAKER_00
When they finally do move in, they kind of get closer together, but not necessarily the entire group of four.
2
SPEAKER_00
So one
2
SPEAKER_00
may only have one job, and that is to look for law enforcement.
2
SPEAKER_00
So with his fingers, he will have a sign, maybe rubbing the ear, touching a nose very quickly, having two fingers extended at the waist.
2
SPEAKER_00
These indications will tell the others whether they can move forward on the victim they want to steal from, or whether they suspect that there is undercover police officers in the close proximity.
2
SPEAKER_03
That s cool and it s more effective because one person can focus on distraction, one person can focus on the thievery, and the other person is essentially a lookout.
2
SPEAKER_03
They communicate in a way that s probably all non-verbal.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s absolutely non-verbal.
2
SPEAKER_00
There is no chatting between them.
2
SPEAKER_00
They do have quite often a cell phone.
2
SPEAKER_00
One of them will have a cell phone and he ll be pretending to be talking to someone.
2
SPEAKER_00
Whether or not, because it varies depending on what cities they come from, very often there s a few cities in Poland where they seem to all come and it s peculiar that it is this way.
2
SPEAKER_00
They will have, you know, maybe one phone is on vibration in their pocket, so they will know that it s go ahead or it s a warning.
2
SPEAKER_00
So they do communicate sometimes electronically.
2
SPEAKER_00
We do not see them work like the cheaters in Las Vegas, where they have vibration bands around their wrists or their ankles, where they can communicate in a more sophisticated manner.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so if you catch someone like that in Las Vegas, you know for sure that they re a cheater.
2
SPEAKER_00
We do not see that on the thieves.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the reason is that
2
SPEAKER_00
if they are apprehended and they had that type of equipment, they would instantly be labeled as a career criminal and the sentence would be more hefty.
2
SPEAKER_03
Ah, yes, of course, right, because they re looking for the, it s a ring at that point, it s organized crime at that point.
2
SPEAKER_03
And you ve been traveling around and tracking criminals for a really long time.
2
SPEAKER_03
I saw the Nat Geo documentary, we re gonna embed that in the show notes if it s still available, but I found it really fascinating about how you re literally going to places looking for thieves now.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, after the 360 days or so, I don t travel every day, tracking criminals in different corners of the world.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I would say that one third out of the year, I am in the street in action and tracking.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now that s a little peculiar, but in these places where I do work, half of the time I have a very intimate relation at the same time with local law enforcement.
2
SPEAKER_00
And they usually like to, if not necessarily hang with me, have a daily interaction where we compare, we may look at photos, we may look at material, and we discuss about some of the new trends in other countries.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I become a library
3
SPEAKER_00
for this material and sometimes because of languages or sometimes of the local laws and how long a certain nation is allowed to apprehend or rather to keep some of this material due to privacy laws that can be rules that a law enforcement agency can only hold on to material for so long.
3
SPEAKER_00
So they are very eager to share with me
3
SPEAKER_00
And since I am not hired by the Swiss police or the German police, it s more that I am hired for the training purposes, but I don t have a continuing contract that would limit my behavior or what I can do and not do in those nations.
3
SPEAKER_00
The bottom line is that my relationship, therefore, with law enforcement is such that I can
3
SPEAKER_00
use my knowledge and my extensive library to train and then speak in front of security conferences where I finally can get paid a lot better than I can from law enforcement.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s not to say that I m looking down
3
SPEAKER_00
on my relationship with law enforcement.
3
SPEAKER_00
On the contrary, that s far more rewarding and I should say satisfying than standing in front of 2,000 bankers in Shanghai and tell them that if they re going to Paris, watch out for this or watch
3
SPEAKER_00
for that.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you know there s enough of security conferences or shall we say banking or insurance conferences where my type of services is uniquely niched so that I have enough of that to keep me constantly traveling.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I m on the road actually 180 days and the remaining days I stay in my home
3
SPEAKER_00
has spread out over the year, of course, and I try and fine tune when I m home, edit my material so that if I am speaking for a banking conference or an insurance conference, I will have material that is unique for them so that I don t just repeat the same thing for each conference.
3
SPEAKER_01
How do you track the criminals at the technical level?
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I ve seen you walking around, you have your dummy wallet that sort of sticks out a little bit.
3
SPEAKER_01
What s the process like?
3
SPEAKER_01
Can you describe that for those of us listening?
3
SPEAKER_00
over the years, there have been different ways that I can use to entice the thief to approach me.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s going to vary enormously in its most exciting way, or I should say humorous way is when they steal from me.
3
SPEAKER_00
But there are certain areas where either because of the language, or because of the danger, I may not do that.
3
SPEAKER_00
So for example, if I m in Brazil,
3
SPEAKER_00
I am not going to let them steal the wallet because I will find that confrontation there.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s unpredictable.
3
SPEAKER_00
But if I am, for example, in Lima, in Peru, I will.
3
SPEAKER_00
In Moscow, in St.
3
SPEAKER_00
Petersburg, in Russia, I will be more observing the thieves than actually interacting with them.
3
SPEAKER_00
And interacting is where it gets exciting.
3
SPEAKER_00
I simply let them steal the wallet.
3
SPEAKER_00
That is in areas where I know that they re not going to clobber me and shove a knife into me.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that would be, for example, Paris and Rome or Barcelona.
3
SPEAKER_00
In those places, I let them steal the wallet and I wait some minutes and then I kind of side up to them.
3
SPEAKER_00
And in Spanish or in Italian or French, whatever, I say, I do the same as you.
3
SPEAKER_00
For example, in French, that would mean, je fais la même quiveau.
3
SPEAKER_00
That means that they re going to look at me, and the first thing they do is they look down at my shoes.
3
SPEAKER_00
And all thieves, when they analyze a victim, they start with the shoes.
3
SPEAKER_00
That may sound strange to you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s weird.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why?
3
SPEAKER_00
If they want to look for a victim, if they re a good pickpocket, they look at the bag, the clothes and the shoes.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they feel that someone, if it s going to be a decent wallet with some money in it, if you have good shoes, you can be nearly certain that there is substantial money in the wallet.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you have crappy shoes, it s a crapshoot as to whether or not there s something money.
3
SPEAKER_00
So there s always an effort in stealing a wallet.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s a significant effort of time you follow, you track the victim carefully, you get to the right point where you can sandwich and create a little diversion to extract the wallet.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s not, you know, spur of the moment.
3
SPEAKER_00
There is an investment of time and effort.
3
SPEAKER_00
And therefore, you want to make them sure that when you do this, you have a good victim.
3
SPEAKER_00
So they re going to look at the shoes and the rest.
3
SPEAKER_00
And a cop is going to have shoes that he can run.
3
SPEAKER_00
He s going to want to be able to get to take chase.
3
SPEAKER_00
And he s not going to think about having some Brioni Berluti shoes from France that cost, you know, 1200 euros.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s the first
3
SPEAKER_00
thing, then they re going to glance further up, they re going to sort of see if there is somewhere where he s carrying his cuffs, and they could be in a small leather container strapped to his belt behind, or he has a small bag that he carries where he has this equipment.
3
SPEAKER_00
They think to some extent that they can smell a cop, they re very arrogant in this sense.
3
SPEAKER_00
And very often they can.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I would say nine times out of 10, they know who is a cop and who is not a cop.
3
SPEAKER_00
So in my case, I dress so that I look like a non-threatening individual, hopefully a tourist.
3
SPEAKER_00
But a tourist, when they become a victim, are very emotional.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re going to shout out.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re going to be angry.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re going to say something like, hey, give me back that wallet, some strain in their face.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t do that.
3
SPEAKER_00
I kind of laugh and I m soft in the face in my behavior and it diffuses the tension that happens and it confuses the hell out of the thief.
3
SPEAKER_00
So now he wonders who is it that he s seeing in front of him.
3
SPEAKER_00
But he s still slightly nervous because he knows he just took my money or my wallet.
3
SPEAKER_00
By the way, there is no money in the wallet.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s only newspaper that are cut.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s no shape of money so that you get the same weight.
3
SPEAKER_00
And as I lean into them, I might try and steal something from him.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that could be, for example, cigarettes or eyeglass case or a phone, something that is easy in what we call upstairs pocket.
3
SPEAKER_00
Downstairs is waste and dumb.
3
SPEAKER_00
You ever do that and then get somebody else s wallet?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, I haven t actually stolen a thief s wallet, but many times I ve stolen their phone or something or whatever, but they just hire up.
3
SPEAKER_00
And now, as I said, here, here s your phone, now give me back the wallet.
3
SPEAKER_00
And when that happened, it baffles the hell out of them.
3
SPEAKER_00
Then very often they will say, hey, let s go and have coffee together.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, it breaks the ice.
3
SPEAKER_00
But that s only about, I would say, 15, 20% of the time that I have that success ratio.
3
SPEAKER_00
The rest of the time, I simply say, I do the same as you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Can we chat a little bit?
3
SPEAKER_00
And they answer back, why should we talk?
3
SPEAKER_00
They may, at that moment, drop my wallet on the ground, since they don t want the confrontation.
3
SPEAKER_00
They sometimes think that I m an immigration officer.
3
SPEAKER_00
I would say that 80% of the time, the thieves, wherever they happen to operate, are going to be illegally in the country where they work.
3
SPEAKER_00
So they don t want to have any confrontation or tracking or being pulled in in front of the law and then sent to another country.
3
SPEAKER_01
Where are they typically from?
3
SPEAKER_01
If 80% of pickpockets that you ve encountered are illegal immigrants, are they Eastern Europeans in Western Europe, or what are we talking about here?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s an intriguing and an interesting question, because I don t want to imply that you have the best pickpockets from nation A, B, and C. But on the other hand, you have to say to yourself, like right now, we have a tremendous immigration problem.
3
SPEAKER_00
across the world.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, Australia are concerned about people coming in from India and Vietnam and Europe are concerned about people coming in from East Europe and Syria and France and England are concerned about people coming in from North Africa, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia.
3
SPEAKER_00
So this sort of problem is basically
3
SPEAKER_00
that people who are young and eager, capable of working, living in a country with very poor opportunities to climb out of the crap where they re living.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you take someone who lives in Venezuela or in Colombia and is not having much opportunity, he s gonna want to come to United States.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s that clear, and the same thing in Europe.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now that does not mean that they become criminals.
3
SPEAKER_00
But if you take someone who is coming, for example, from Romania, since we have a lot of pickpockets in Europe from Romania, the reason is that they are young and capable, and they come to a country where they think they re going to find work, and they don t find work.
3
SPEAKER_00
So there s high unemployment, and then a small percentage of these people are going to resort to crime.
3
SPEAKER_00
It could be simple crime, nothing particular,
4
SPEAKER_01
sophisticated.
4
SPEAKER_01
If they then get arrested while they are in prison, two things may happen.
4
SPEAKER_01
They get galvanized into, for example, if they re Muslim, they may get radicalized by their imam since they have a right to speak to the imam.
4
SPEAKER_01
And some of these imams are very anti-Western and they indoctrinize them in the wrong direction.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so a small percentage of them, when they come out,
4
SPEAKER_01
could possibly become terrorists.
4
SPEAKER_01
So if you look at since 9-11, every single incident of terrorism, they always have a crime record since they are rather simple mind.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that s one road that we like to track and look at.
4
SPEAKER_01
The other road is that
4
SPEAKER_01
If they are unemployed and they working on the building site and then they lose their job and then resort to crime they start one of the first thing they may do is breaking into a car the second thing maybe selling drugs on the third thing is pickpocketing so some of them are gonna be darn good.
4
SPEAKER_01
in this.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right, right, sure.
4
SPEAKER_00
So you think they learn the trade after they come over with a legitimate trade and hit hard times.
4
SPEAKER_00
They maybe meet up with the wrong crowd or the right crowd for them and they get trained in this in-country.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, that is, I would say, half of the ones that are coming from their home country.
4
SPEAKER_01
We also have to know that it is not quite that simple.
4
SPEAKER_01
So you also have absolutely professional pickpockets coming from Albania, from Bulgaria,
4
SPEAKER_01
from Poland, from Romania, from Algeria, who simply took the art of their craft from their home country, and they might have been arrested so many times in their home country that they find ways to now go abroad and continue.
4
SPEAKER_01
from South America, there are organized crime bosses that simply send them to Europe or to America to continue steal.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we find that when we look at when they send money home, it goes to bosses and not to their own family.
4
SPEAKER_01
And they are very hard to break.
4
SPEAKER_01
So when we catch them, they have a lot of scar tissue where they have been either harmed or showing in prison some signs where they ve been cut.
4
SPEAKER_01
They do not talk.
4
SPEAKER_01
You cannot break them.
4
SPEAKER_01
at all, you can t find out who the hell is that boss because they know if they do talk, they re going to kill or harm their sister or relative at home.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s scary.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s for sure.
4
SPEAKER_01
Scary.
4
SPEAKER_01
Of course, I have to make it very clear that that behavior does not repeat itself across all pickpockets.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, that s a unique thing among certain South American pickpockets.
4
SPEAKER_00
All right, back to Bob Varno.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think just because a lot of people, myself included, before I saw the documentary that you re in, again, we will embed in the show notes, was that like pickpockets were teenage kids that just kind of learned a cool trick, and they bump into you at Times Square, and they take your wallet, and they run off, and they buy a skateboard.
4
SPEAKER_00
But this is more organized crime.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s an interesting skill set, and a lot of the things that they work on take years, and in fact, in the film,
4
SPEAKER_00
You gathered a bunch of top pickpockets in Naples at a restaurant like a trade convention after honeypotting these guys and setting it up and going to get coffee and meeting with these guys and comparing some tricks of the trade, which I thought was really interesting.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then you went with them to steal in the wild, which I thought was really, really interesting.
4
SPEAKER_00
Tell us a little bit about meeting up with these guys and actually going hunting with them.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, that was a kind of unique challenge there.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I thought about that very carefully to what extent that was appropriate.
4
SPEAKER_01
And if you, for example, you know, there are some very famous hackers in America,
4
SPEAKER_01
who have served time.
4
SPEAKER_01
And when they come out, they they ve done their sentence.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so they re back in society.
4
SPEAKER_01
Some corporations, when they hire them, they think twice about actually having someone speak in front of a crowd, even although they reveal things because they have served serious time.
4
SPEAKER_01
And why should we therefore pay them and sort of in an amusing way reward them for their time in jail?
4
SPEAKER_00
Right.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I did not want the reputation in this program of showing that I can be out stealing in the real world.
4
SPEAKER_01
I had some very serious questions about that.
4
SPEAKER_01
But the idea with the program was to make it go viral so that people become aware of the threat factor.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because unfortunately, the police around the world cannot do more than what they are presently doing.
4
SPEAKER_01
There is no way
4
SPEAKER_01
that any government is going to hire more police officers to catch pickpockets.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so the actual truth is that nine times out of 10, even if the police know who they are, they do not serve any time.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the law, especially in Europe, is that if you steal less than 400 euros from a victim, that s $450, you only get a slap on the wrist, you get a fine.
4
SPEAKER_01
you do not get prison time.
4
SPEAKER_01
So what happens?
4
SPEAKER_01
The thief goes out and steals a little more to pay off his first fine.
4
SPEAKER_01
In other words, the police themselves all across Europe are very frustrated.
4
SPEAKER_01
Even here in America, if you are doing a non-violent
4
SPEAKER_01
and crime like pickpocketing, unless you have some serious records on file, you get very, very little time.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I have felt that the only way you can open up people s eyes is to let people understand that this can happen to you.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I can tell you that just a few days when I was in Paris, I am with a Swiss police officer who has just arrived in.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s an expert at pickpocketing, has done so for 10 years.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we are together with three other police officers, and I won t tell from what countries.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re all coming in from the airport, except me, who was already in, and we are entering the metro, and within three minutes, the Swiss guy loses his wallet from his little, what we call, man bag, you know, a mail bag, whatever they call them, that hangs on the shoulder.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, the attractive kind of bag.
4
SPEAKER_01
And in there was his police record, his police shield, his passport, and his credit card.
4
SPEAKER_01
That was within three minutes of entry.
4
SPEAKER_01
How did it happen?
4
SPEAKER_01
the door open and a attractive well-dressed bulgarian lady has stood behind him and it was crowded and there was a bit of a lurch she took the wallet the door open up she took off he never felt it until he checked into the hotel and he said where the hell is the wallet my point is
4
SPEAKER_01
It can happen to anyone.
4
SPEAKER_01
It can be sleek.
4
SPEAKER_01
And in this particular case, because there was a zipper, so it wasn t happening from his pocket, but actually from that bag.
4
SPEAKER_01
So that made it a little easier.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m just trying to say here, the only way you can limit this crime is to make people aware.
4
SPEAKER_01
So this particular program that we had in mind, we wanted to end it on a fun note.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I had reservations about actually going out there and stealing.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right, I was gonna ask you, you know, you taught some of these guys some stage tricks, and I was wondering if you got caught in the moment, and you maybe regretted teaching these guys some new ways to steal, because they were already actually stealing.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I just want you to know that everything there was, of course, instantly returned, and because I was so concerned about the whole, shall we say, ethical
4
SPEAKER_01
aspect in the end, even although the producer was kind of goading me on to do this, he wanted it desperately for the program.
4
SPEAKER_01
I wasn t so eager about doing it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I have some great reservations.
4
SPEAKER_01
So we finally did.
4
SPEAKER_01
The teaching, there is an instance there where I show one of the pickpockets how I steal a belt on stage.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, you have to understand that in my case, I talk to my victims.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I may put the hand on the shoulder and I may ask him a quick question.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m getting nearby.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then I reverse.
4
SPEAKER_01
I sort of turn around.
4
SPEAKER_01
And with the back of my hand, I open the belt and I do an absolute hundred and eighty degrees turn with my body in contact with the victim.
4
SPEAKER_01
Therefore, the belt is coming off.
4
SPEAKER_01
that you can t repeat in the real world because if a thief comes up to an individual and says are you from New York and then start doing that move, no one is going to sort of accept that premise.
4
SPEAKER_01
So thieves
5
SPEAKER_00
in the real world don t talk to the victim.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s a silent theft, a silent crime.
5
SPEAKER_01
You know, it s funny because I actually caught, I shouldn t say caught, I spotted a pickpocket that went after my dad when I was in Switzerland.
5
SPEAKER_01
We were at a train station, which is prime time pickpocket, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
That s correct.
5
SPEAKER_01
And there was a guy and my dad walking ahead of us and my dad is probably, you know, he s 70 years old and he loves to walk with maps and stuff sticking out of his back pocket.
5
SPEAKER_01
and he s got a jacket with an elastic waist so it goes over the back of his jacket and he s got these jeans and he s walking and then there was a guy who was smoking and he looked like he hadn t slept in three days and he was standing around and he was he looked different than all of the sort of local Swiss folks which kind of automatically gave me a little bit of pause and he was he almost burned my mom with a cigarette because he had stepped out I saw him laser beam focus on my dad he just looked right at him
5
SPEAKER_01
after my dad passed and he didn t notice we were with him because we were 10 feet behind my dad because of course like a classic dad he s oblivious and just walks off without us while we re on vacation and so he almost burned my mom with this but I saw him and my mom goes well excuse me and he didn t pay any attention to her he s still looking right at my dad and he walked up and he kept walking a little bit faster
5
SPEAKER_01
So I almost had a jog at this point, walked up really, really fast, and then I stepped right in front of him, and I stopped really hard, and he bumped right into me, and I went, oh, excuse me, I m so sorry, in German, and he couldn t get the German right away, which made me notice, oh, this is not his first language, he s not Swiss, I was right, and then I said, excuse me, do you know what time it is?
5
SPEAKER_01
And he shrugged, and then I said, what time is it, what time is it, leaning in, kind of not letting him just walk off,
5
SPEAKER_01
And then he looked at me again and looked at my dad and then kind of gave up because my dad was too far away.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then he said, sorry, sorry.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then he just walked back to where he was standing.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I know he was going to go lift that because he went right back to where he was.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I thought, wow, this is really, I was pretty excited.
5
SPEAKER_01
I was like, I just got a pickpocket and I foiled it.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s really neat.
5
SPEAKER_01
Even though he only would have gotten the map.
5
SPEAKER_01
But it s scary because, you know, what do they do if you catch them in the act?
5
SPEAKER_01
Do they run away or do they punch you in the face?
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, of course, you know, that s a very valid question, because obviously, you like to know, how should we, the regular traveler, how should we behave if we sense that we are being confronted?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes, exactly.
5
SPEAKER_00
And the answer is, it depends on the day and the location.
5
SPEAKER_00
If you are in a dark alley in any of the Eastern countries,
5
SPEAKER_00
and that means including Poland or Bulgaria or whatever, and it s even seven o clock and the sun has set and it s not too much traffic around you, you have to be exceptionally cautious.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s close to a mugging scenario.
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I m going to give you an answer in a second here how you should behave.
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On the other hand, if you are on a crowded
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Metro in Rome, for example, from Termini to the Spanish steps, you can shout out loud and push them away or whatever, because although the Italians aren t going to step in and help you, you made it clear to them, the thieves, that you are too much effort and they re going to shy away and go for someone else.
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They are not going to shove a knife into you.
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Pickpocketing is not always like that it can also be at eleven o clock in barcelona and in the day that particular street where you re on it looks very attractive with maps and little stores and things selling doodad and in the night it changes character and a lot of druggies are on here and they may show up against the wall,
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And you think it is pickpocketing, but it s actually mugging.
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And they may say, mother F, give me the money.
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You should have what we call give up money.
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You should have maybe 10 euros or whatever and instantly give them.
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Pull it out from whatever you keep it so that it kind of drops to the ground.
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They have to bend down and then walk quickly in the opposite direction.
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When it comes to mugging, you have to analyze any dark street that you are entering and see where light and where the end of it is when you re in a foreign country and ask yourself, is this area, you know, hotel porter is the guy to ask them when you re checking in.
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Can I walk here in the evening?
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Is this totally safe or is it not safe?
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And parts of London that in the day are safe are not safe in the night.
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There are mugging scenarios.
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The same thing in Paris.
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It depends on where you are.
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If you re in the main tourist area because it s so busy, you don t have to worry.
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You can walk in the night.
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Well, not necessarily past midnight, but it depends.
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And you need to do your homework.
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And there are places where you get these answers.
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U.S.
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government have a travel site where you can get this.
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Right.
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You know it s interesting that you mentioned that.
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You said ask the hotel porter.
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And that s actually a good tip that I don t think – I think it bears repeating because a lot of people will go, yeah, cool.
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Well, I m already talking to the concierge.
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I ll just ask him.
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And here s a big difference.
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In a nice hotel or even a medium quality hotel, one that would have a concierge for example, that guy is fluent in English, probably a little bit more educated, probably grew up in a very different place than the guy who goes out in the hot weather or the snow or the rain and lifts baggage and just brings it inside.
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And a lot of times the guys who are outside lifting bags, they re on the street
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10 hours a day watching everybody go by.
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They know who s up to something.
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They see those guys pass by.
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They know who s getting robbed because they see the customers coming in and out.
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The concierge is in a completely different world.
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And a lot of times, especially in developing countries, a lot of times the porters grew up in the same neighborhoods as all the thieves.
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They hung out with all the same rough crowd, and now they have a legit job.
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The concierge may be a different story.
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They might have grown up completely different.
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So asking somebody who has that type of upbringing, that type of connections, is going to give you a different answer than the girl they hired to work at the check-in counter, whose job it is to give a good first impression of the hotel.
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Well, you know, this is absolutely a valid point you re making.
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But on the other hand, location, location, location, just like real estate, really, you know, there are some areas where you have to be far more concerned.
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And just to give you an example, and now I m going to start sort of pooping on a nation or two here, which I usually don t like to do, because I don t want to have, you know, be part of those.
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Tell me the worst 10 places in the world for blah, blah, blah.
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I don t like the idea of USA Today, five best restaurants if you don t know anything.
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But the truth of the matter is that if you, for example, are coming in by air into Venezuela, Caracas,
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you stand a darn good chance that there are lookers spotters inside that airport that evaluates that you are a potential and so they may either have friends with the taxis and the taxi gets sandwiched or you step into even the wrong taxi and you get you know mugged halfway into town
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Even the people who work with a passport sometimes have cahoots and they will call up their friends and tell you exactly what you look like and whether you are valuable or not.
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So there are certain countries like that.
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Take something like the Bahamas.
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which 10 years ago was one of the most charming destinations in the West Indies, or for that matter, in the Western Hemisphere.
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Now it has, in the last few years, there s such bad unemployment and so crime-ridden that the US government consider it one of the most dangerous places in this hemisphere.
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That is per capita, meaning you can visit NASA downtown and not get mugged.
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But compared with other places, it is very high up the list.
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And there are certain travel sites and certain governments, United Kingdom and Canada being two of them, who considers Bahamas to be the sort of place where you must warn people over and over about being superbly cautious.
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Interesting.
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That s not something you hear a lot.
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Usually you think Bahamas, boats and resorts.
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You don t think mugging and theft.
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For example, never be on the beach alone in the evening.
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Don t, if you re a woman, walk alone or
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or just two girls in the dark area or along the beach, for example, at nine o clock.
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There is a lot of what I would call common sense that are necessary.
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Drinks that are being spiked, you know, that a few countries, I can t sort of start now giving you a list of 10 places where a girl going to the club scene stands a good chance to have something squeezed into her drink.
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you get these advice or these comments by simply prepare yourself.
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So go on the internet and do a little research.
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If you re going to go to free places that you have never heard of before, you think they re exotic, check out on the crime scene.
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And the same thing, you know, applies with with visas and hotels and restaurants.
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There s so much that you should do before you start your travels.
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Now, I want to wrap with
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a little bit of what to look for, because for example, I spotted that pickpocket, but I can t necessarily articulate everything.
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It was just, his focus was just too intense on my dad.
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He wasn t paying attention to other things, and he looked out of place.
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But what do you look for, and what can people listening look for when we re on a crowded bus, train, or a crowded tourist area?
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What do we look for at the very beginning level to spot people who might be targeting us?
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Well, you ve heard of the term train spotting, am I correct?
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Of course.
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OK, so the same thing, you know, applies to to thief spotting, meaning that the majority of us will simply not be able to spot the thief unless we are starting to understand a list of maybe five to 10 things that
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are necessary to observe.
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The first thing is that the majority of this crime happens at the doors of public transportation.
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So if you re taking the metro in Paris or in Rome, the thieves kind of loops at the door, they either step in, do their crime and step out.
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So where that door area is both in front of it, and that means that the thieves will not be the first one on board
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maybe two yards from the door inspecting people as they rush in on a crowded train.
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And then they want to be in the jam and sandwich you.
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So look at the faces, the serious faces of these people as they re about to come in.
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The next thing is look at the angle of their face.
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The majority of people are going to look straight in as they board a bus or they re going to look up at an angle because they want to make sure they don t sort of trip on the person in front of them.
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They want to look at the space around.
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The thieves, on the other hand,
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tilts his head at about 45 to 90 degrees because he s looking down at the area of the zippers of the lady s handbag.
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He looks at the entrance of the pocket.
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Is it slanted sideways or is it cuts at 90 degrees?
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So he wonders about, for example, the wallet inside.
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We call it the print of the money, which basically means the four corners.
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The thief looks at
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where those four corners are in relationship to the top of the pocket.
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Is it two inches more of fabric, or is it further down?
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If it s further down, they need to, what they call, kick the poke, which basically means flip the wallet up with another finger from the other hand, and then meet it from the top with the extracting hand where they clip the tip of the leather, snipping it, and then zigzagging it out of the wallet, of the pocket.
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So that s number two, in other words, the angle of the face.
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Number three, if you re in a hotel lobby or in a station, they hover around.
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They seem to aimlessly move from A to B without a purpose.
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Number four, they ever so often they turn to see if they are followed.
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They want to know if law enforcement are catching on to you.
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Now, for the majority of us, we don t want to spend that much time scrutinizing every person who is moving about.
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But if you want to catch them, you want to look at that.
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then you want to see their face reaction.
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If someone is continuously appearing to be serious, and not all the time, looking up at the board for the next train or in an airport, when is there, you know, at their meet at arrival hall, for example, they usually don t
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work at the departure gate, they work at the arrival gate.
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So there you have five things that are pretty typical if you want to really see them in action.
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Excellent, thank you so much.
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I really appreciate this.
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Is there anything that you want to leave us with that I haven t asked you?
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Of course we ll link to the documentary and things like that in the show notes as well.
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Well, I would like to mention two, three very, very quick advice scenarios.
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One is be aware of what we call shoulder surfers.
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That means that even if you are purchasing with your credit card and especially abroad, if you have the new
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A chip and pin where four numbers have to be put in on a keyboard in order to get to activate your credit card specially if you are in a place where you re not at an ATM but not where you re not getting money off but you buy for example a ticket and you think i don t have to be worried too much here if they standing side from a diagonally observing you,
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they may check out that number and then they track you they follow you for 15-20 minutes until you are in a weak scenario and then they lift the wallet and now they max out the card and that s good for two to four thousand dollars.
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So observe that apple picking of course be cautious when you travel abroad if you re sitting in a very cute restaurant and you re having a cappuccino or an espresso and you put your phone on the table
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Don t let it sit there because they simply walk by and snatch it straight off the table.
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That is a very important thing.
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The credit card may have three cards, one in the room where you re staying locked up there in the safe, and if they steal, you have that third card to use
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until you wait for the next two.
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And finally, put most of your important information on a small thumb drive, a flash drive.
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If you re really good, have it partitioned.
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There are certain safety flashcards that you can buy or thumb drives where you store most of the important
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thing, like your driver license, for example, your insurance numbers, someone emergency to call in case of an event, and your passport information.
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If you have all of that in a safe place on your flash drive, then even if you have a bad scenario, obviously that little thumb drive should not be stored with the rest of your stuff in case they steal your wallet.
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Well, great.
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Thank you very much, Bob Arno, professor of pickpocketry.
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Thank you very much.
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Thank you.
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Fun to talk to you.
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Interesting episode.
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A lot of psychology there and a lot of nonverbal communication really applied in a really interesting way, which I thought was pretty cool.
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And I ve kind of been interested in this topic ever since I did catch that pickpocket who went after my dad or spotted that pickpocket who went after my dad as well.
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And I think the documentary is worth a watch.
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It ll be linked in the show notes.
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as well if you find yourself interested in the pickpocketry topic and the nonverbal communication and the tells, especially at a more advanced level than just the basics.
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