The lost art of pickpockets | Hacker News Reader

The lost art of pickpockets

slate.com

137 pointsyummyfajitas64 comments

Those who have no stomach for violence can eke out a living snatching cell phones on the subway, which are much easier to convert to cash than stolen credit cards...

At first I thought this was a fake semantic distinction, but now I see: Snatching is not the same as pickpocketing, because the mark helpfully takes out the most valuable item they own and holds it in prime stealing position for you, instead of concealing it in a pocket.

So this seems like the obvious reason why pickpocketing is dying: We've made it too easy. The most easily-fenced, most valuable object I carry is also one which I am very likely to take out and juggle as I wander through crowded places.

Here's where a better article would have coupled the stats on pickpockets with actual stats on public theft and other petty crimes, including things like ATM skimming. (Of course, I believe that all of these things are declining in absolute terms.)

A friend of mine had his brand new iPhone 4 snatched on the subway here a few weeks back. It's a real eye opener. You just hold it out there. If you aren't ready for someone to take it, it's trivial to grab it out of your hands and jump out of the doors while they close.

My mother taught me never to take out valuables, especially money, in crowded public places. Isn't this a common teaching, such as "never cross the road without checking for cars"?

In most parts of the US such lessons are rare. I grew up in the Middle East where I learned similar lessons. To many here's unthinkable that one can't just leave their bag lying next to them, or some such.

Heck, outside of the cities many people here don't even lock their doors.

Yup, I'm from Turkey. Maybe it is a Middle East thing.

Same lessons from India, so I think it's a developing world thing. Or maybe even a high-income-disparity-culture thing?

Yes, probably. These things are also common in some parts of Europe. For example, I remember being told to beware of pickpockets and bag snatchers in Spain in the 90s.

I think it's a high density thing. Same lessons in Western Europe.

I disagree. I grew up in the US and I keep everything locked, keep my possessions close, watch what is going on around me in crowds, etc.

I'm sure I'm not pickpocket proof but I don't have to be. I just have to not be the easiest one in the area.

Sure, but the point of smartphones is that you can use them any time, anywhere.

Warnings about crossing the road tend to be more lax in places where there aren't many cars.

thanks to enhanced security features, it's harder for thieves to use stolen credit or debit cards than it was in the past.

The pickpockets just moved into technology: card skimming, phishing or general ID theft. Back in the day, you could lose your wallet, now you can get your bank account cleaned and a destroyed credit rating.

i bet the proliferation of skinny jeans is to blame. the person wearing the jeans can barely get their own hand in their pocket, how's a pickpocket supposed to do it undetected?

I can confirm this first hand. Two pickpockets tried to get my stuff in Barcelona. One had his hand in my left pocket with my cell phone, the other one in the right pocket with my wallet and passport.

Sorry, folks, but my jeans pockets are like monkey traps. If you grab anything in there you won't be able to get your hand out. They pickpockets figured that out quickly and ran off without any loot. Tight jeans saved my vacation.

Gradual castration victim or easy pickpocket victim? Tradeoffs, tradeoffs...

Ah, damn. I should have known that. My wallet was stolen in Barcelona. (The police was super nice, everyone in the German consulate was extremely grumpy. Since only 50€ and my ID card were stolen I didn’t care one bit and continued traveling all around Europe as planned even though – as the woman in the German consulate grumpily told me – that is most definitely verboten. Open borders are nice.)

Barcelona is really bad. I lived there for a while, and was never pickpocketed but was attempted multiple times, each time in the metro down at the south end of Las Ramblas. I have seen people's wallets get picked in the tourist areas. This is the same area where all the shell game people are.

I was eating in a cafe with a girl once in Gracia, and her bag was stolen off the chair next to her (dumb of her to put it there, dumb of me for not warning her or paying more attention).

Another time I was out at night with friends, and the girl walking in front of me on the sidewalk had her shoulderbag straight ripped off her arm by a speeding moto, knocking her to the ground.

The key I think is awareness of your surroundings, and preventive measures like checking your belongings regularly (I have a habit of tapping my pockets when passing people etc). And don't go into any place where you feel uncomfortable.

No, the lack of skills of the pickpockets saved your vacations. Pickpocketing is based on diverting the mark's attention.

If a hot girl touches your arm and look at you in the eyes with a vivid smile, you won't feel the hand searching for your pocket. I'm pretty sure someone could put a leg in your back pocket and you wouldn't still feel a thing!

The real protection is to have your money inside your belt or similar location and just have decoys in your pockets.

I disbelieve. My brother learned to pick-pocket for giggles and grins. And I've seem him demonstrate the skill. Tight jeans is not a challenge as long as the target's attention is elsewhere.

True. I had my cellphone picked from my jeans when trying to board a bus. My attention was on ensuring whether i was boarding the right bus and i was relieved off my cellphone in a matter of couple of seconds.

>the New York Times reported that there were 23,068 reported pickpocketing incidents in the city in 1990, amounting to nearly $10 million in losses.

That's over $400 per incident. Either people carry a hell of a lot of cash on them or there are some outliers with some interesting stories to tell.

I imagine the pickpockets also stole watches and other valuable jewelry.

$400 seems right. Jack someone's wallet and then walk into the nearest big box store to use their credit cards.

I've had my credit card # stolen 3 or 4 times and $400 is about the average amount of fraud that happened each time.

It's usually like a tank of gas and a trip to Best Buy to purchase something like a video game console. One time they bought a plane ticket online for $350.

One time they bought a plane ticket online for $350.

I assume this one get caught?

Don't assume anything.

I had someone steal my card info and use it to by a bed and mattress, which was delivered to their house.

Sears (ahem) wouldn't tell me who bought it, or where it was delivered, because I wasn't the purchaser, but they were happy to charge me for it. I turned it over to the police, but they said they weren't going to deal with it as it was 'only' ~$1200. This was in 2002 IIRC.

When such a thing happens, initiate a chargeback through your bank. Additionally federal (US) regulations limit your out of pocket expenses of fraud to $50.

I caught it about 2 days after it happened, and got the bank involved and had my money restored in a couple more days - that wasn't a big deal. The frustrating thing was that this was just 100% glossed over by law enforcement. This wasn't a $40 meal splurge by a petty thief - it was a freakin bedroom set.

I'm pretty sure Sears committed a crime in not telling you. But every state/country is different.

They weren't to know - I might have bought a bed and shipped it to someone in another state as a gift. After I told them it wasn't my purchase, however, they should have given me the info, but they didn't. Police didn't seem to care, bank didn't seem to care. Odd...

Depends on where you are, but in a city cops aren't going to bother if the amount's not enough to get felony charges.

The fact that it's the average for reported incidents probably cuts out a lot of the outliers on the low end of the scale.

That and the fact that people probably exaggerate the loss for insurance purposes.

Also, pickpockets and muggers are likely to profile their targets- Traditionally this would have been the wealthy, counterintuitively it's now the poor: People without credit cards and/or bank accounts, and immigrants paid in cash who are forced to walk or bike home from work through a bad neighborhood in the dark with an entire week's pay in their pocket.

Back in '08 or so I was at Disneyland. A woman bumped in to me after getting off the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Then she bumped into me again at the turnstyle going out where people back up a bit. I remember thinking she was rude.

When I got outside, a person mentioned my wallet was about to fall out of my back pocket. Never having my wallet fall out like that, before or since, I've always wondered if the rude lady was an inept pickpocket, practicing in a place where the pickings are probably easy and disappearing in the crowd is effortless on a busy day.

It sounds like she grabbed you wallet, took (or planted) whatever, and then put it back...

I can imagine her taking cash but what would she plant?

Her number? giggity.

Drugs? Someone else's stolen cards or ID?

Who is giving out free drugs?

The TSA. Except they're fake.

http://consumerist.com/2010/01/tsa-employee-thought-it-would...

Someone who needs to ditch them before they're caught? I dunno, trying to get creative here.

Barcelona is damn bad for pickpocketing so watch yourself if you are in town and look around you for potential thieves. Be especially vary of people who are very nicely dresses as it's a normal rouse to dress sharply so you have your guard down. Also a jacket casually over the arm can be a sign that they are looking for quick dives into open handbags etc. I usually just assume an agressive posture and look around. If you don't look like an easy mark or more like someone who could potentially fight back they will target someone else.

Being Spanish and living here for the last 3 years I have never been pickpocketed or robbed but know a lot of people that it has happened to and especially people visiting.

So if you come to Barcelona, always walk with your wallet in the front pocket, carry a bag in front of you on escalators or on the metro and if you are, two keep an eye on each others back and you won't have to run to the consulate for a new passport and deal with canceling all your cards.

And when entering the subway if there's a crowd to enter at your door let them enter first or go to another. I saw someone getting pickpocketed this way in Barcelona, and a friend was pickpocketed like this in London.

This reminded me of a nice article on the decline of burglary in the UK: http://www.economist.com/node/2709203?story_id=2709203

Except, of course, crime is only cool if you're not the victim.

We're supposed to be sad about this?

I mean, sure, if it were being replaced with more violent thievery that would be bad, but crime has been dipping across the board.

It's a romantic post, hence the references to all the fictional depictions of pickpockets. It's very much of a piece with the heroes of caper films - people don't normally root for crooks, but the idea of a nonviolent, clever crook who puts a lot of work into perfecting what he does appeals to people.

Amusing - "dipping" is slang for pick-pocketing ...

""It requires a certain amount of skill, finesse, cleverness, and planning, and the patience to do all that isn't there" among American young people."

So, it seems, in addition to hard science, we're getting our asses kicked in the pickpocketing area too!

We'll have to start issuing H1 visas to import pickpockets.

Has anyone read The Great Train Robbery by Crichton? It talks about all sorts of stuff like this, except in Victorian era England. Great book.

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Train-Robbery-Michael-Crichton/d...

The idea of a train moving from London to Dover at a speed high enough to make a robbery difficult was ,until recently, almost unimaginable!

Yes, it reads like a Victorian Era Oceans 11. One of the biggest things I remember about it was that they didn't even consider doing anything but stealing the keys to the safe. It wasn't "pickable" given their technology level, explosives weren't powerful enough to open it and it was massive enough to make brute force measures infeasible.

I found this a very interesting read (look for responses by "pocketed" for one pickpocketer's viewpoint and strategies):

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/bxy7x/per_request_iama...

My biggest takeaway: People do not pay attention. I was taught at a young age to pay attention to my surroundings, and I cannot help but notice how easy it is to walk normally on a sidewalk and surprise people with my presence. People are just plain distracted. In other words, for someone like this, they are easy marks, easy prey.

Luckily there's no shortage of other creative thefts in much of Europe.

Here's a story how my girlfriend and travel partner got covered in sludge as part of an elaborate diversion to steal her backpack with over $2,000 worth of stuff.

http://shazow.posterous.com/find-yourself-covered-in-slime-y...

Think this is worth posting to HN as a submission?

That exact method was used on a friend of mine in Spain not too long ago. She was walking down the street, found herself covered in something that seemed like vomit, and then being assisted by Spanish "gentlemen". A minute later, she had no purse, no passport, no money, and no phone. Ouch.

Distressingly clever distraction, I would say.

Coincidentally, John Dvorak was just pick pocketed in Madrid: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380787,00.asp

Pickpockets always make me think of the Roald Dahl story, The Hitch-Hiker.

Link to story: http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:un_MdjwjvxkJ:w...

The two-column view may be a bit of a downer, but then one could always download the Word document...

Watch Bob Arno (who's quoted in the article) ply the trade:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_bsbL74YaE

Reminds me of this Moth Radio Hour episode http://www.themoth.org/radio_205 You can listen to the piece on the prx site after signing up for an account http://www.prx.org/pieces/47406-moth-radio-hour-205

If anyone is really nostalgic for this, I recommend they come to Buenos Aires. We have some of the best pickpockets in the world! I had my laptop stolen in 2007, and I know a couple of people who've had their wallets stolen.

It seems like the drug trade and pickpocketing are in competition for young labor, maybe that's part of it?

I'll be that guy.

What is this doing on HN? This isn't technical. This isn't about startups.

I wonder if "Clever Tricks Rapists Use" is next.

it's pretty much alive and i have no wallet to prove it (was pickpocketed last week, 70% sure of it)

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