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This is a known scam where the thieves try to make a whole big scene saying that YOU stole their bag. The "victim" here probably knew that, so decided to make a big scene first on her terms.
Old, but reliable scam. Happened to a friend of mine on a bus 20 years ago. Some guy walked on and tried to claim that my friend had his backpack.
Doesn't work quite as well in cities with less mass transit because most everyone on the bus has similar schedules and recognizes everyone else. Scammer got sent packing immediately. Apparently they're bringing plants now to help egg on the crowds.
I use public transport to work and I think in the three years I've lived here I've not seen a single person twice, although statistically I should have
Dunno where you are but this was Minneapolis/St Paul which had crap for mass transit. At least back then. Very hub and spoke without much else. If you were commuting from the suburbs to down town you were often on the same schedule and same bus as a lot of other people. I was never able to leverage the system as the routes could never get me to work. Biked a lot, though.
You’ve never seen a guy with a cross body bag, a tote bag or a back pack on pubic transit? Either you’ve never been to a city or you’ve never opened your eyes
It's kind of hilarious how they know they can easily dupe someone into being a white knight, laying down for them based solely on gender. I've seen it in person. Guys will instantly go caveman to defend a woman's honor. They don't know the woman and they don't even understand the situation to even make the judgment to defend her.
I swear, how are people not getting this? Let me play it out since people seem to lack reading comprehension.
Step 1. Pickpocket sees purse they want to take.
Step 2. They grab at the purse and start yelling, "hey, give me back my purse!" Even though it's not theirs
Step 3. People minding their business don't realize what's going on and only see someone trying to "get back their purse." So they either, A. Don't interfere cause that's not their problem, or B. Do interfere and believe the person causing the commotion thinking they are helping someone get their purse back, when in actuality they are inadvertently assisting the pickpocket.
Step 4. They manage to get the purse out of its rightful owners hands for even a split second, and the lying thief takes off pretending they just avoided a robbery while whoever helped confronts the supposed suspect, even though they're the victim.
So here’s the scenario. This woman starts screaming; “give me my bag back!” And pulling on your bag. Most people haven’t been paying attention so they don’t know what to think. They just know that some woman is hysterically begging for her bag as if someone stole it. Then her accomplice comes in and “saves the day” by “getting her bag back” hopefully while some dumb white knights hold you down. Then they run off with your bag in the commotion. This woman dealt with it like you should. Always create a bigger commotion.
I used to think like this until I had rats in my back yard. The exterminator told me, “You have to be smarter than a rat to catch a rat”, unfortunately most people are not smarter than rats, contrary to their beliefs, they could never catch a rat.
I mean, the rat has more on the line. To a human, the problem is pests or no pests, which is not inconsequential, but for the rat it’s life or death. It makes sense they’re putting more effort into the situation - people have jobs, outsmarting extermination IS the rat’s job.
Doesn't always work. There's videos of bystanders helping the scammers because they look like elderly women. Who you going to believe in a split second? The old lady or the young person
Yeah I saw a video of a big black guy fighting several dudes while the little old lady was helped to steal his bag but he wouldn't give up on it. Eventually he said what was in the bag and the white knights looked and found it to be true while Babushka just shuffled off and he walked off with a face covered in blood from all the people that had attacked him to "defend" her.
This happened at Tomorrowland. A woman stole a guy's phone, he then lunged at her trying to get his phone back. She screamed help and everyone took her side. Then while everyone was yelling at the guy, she quickly ran away. His friend group caught up with him a few minutes later confirming that he did indeed have his phone stolen.
It works as long as you do it correctly. It works even better when the thief is a woman and the victim a man.
I got mugged in New Orleans and the bouncers helped him get away from me. I had his balls and penis firmly between my fingernails. I mean my nails were touching through his skin. As soon as the bouncers pried me off of him, he was gone with my wallet and jewelry. The police had to come before they would believe me. I hope he will always remember how much that hurt. When I walked into the New Orleans police station the officers came out of the back offices to hear the story.
Damn I was at Hulaween and had just bought a pin from a vendor and usually would put my wallet in my fanny pack wallet pocket zipped up but was in a hurry to get to another set. Wearing shorts with loose pockets and someone saw it fall out and chased me down to return it. I was so greatful because that would have ruined my day big time
Then the grifter calls the police and sticks to their guns, so to speak. Saw a video of this happen. A woman did this to a black man in NY, I believe. Guess who the police believed?
It happens in america too. A viral video went around of a some old lady accusing a black guy of stealing her headphones, everyone gathers around start guilt trippong the guy then proved it was his and everyone waa like "ah well" nah fuck these people and im glad she got what she deserved
Used to work security. Had a lady do this where I worked. But instead of a bag it was a guy's daughter. By the time we got there, 6 guys were helping to try and kidnap his kid without knowing it
But she's already got a bag, so if she takes it she's going to be standing there with two bags while the victim doesn't have one? To me it would seem apparent that she was stealing it.
Probably same concept as the “you stole my kid” crime
You go to a lady with a baby, somehow take the baby, then start yelling that a lady is trying to take YOUR baby, and the bystanders will likely aid you and stop or slow down the person chasing you so you can make a clean getaway
The story I heard always involves a man who left to go outside to change his baby or something like that. He's with the child, the woman comes up to him, basically takes the stroller or the baby (if there's no stroller) and then goes "DON'T YOU EVER COME NEAR MY BABY AGAIN! LEAVE US ALONE!"
She storms off, and the man rightfully goes after HIS baby. Bystanders who are only now paying attention stop the man and let her walk free.
I think in the story I remember, somehow the wife returns, gets the baby back but the man has to deal with a ton of crap including injuries while no one is accountable for any of it.
Very far fetched. Very unlikely...but I'm having a tough time shooting down how incredibly effective this grift would be.
They do it in a place with a lot of people, hoping to get them on their side. When it works, suddenly their target has a handful of people, sometimes others in on it, accusing them of theft and distracting them.
Yeah, the biggest mistake was targeting a woman. These pick pockets often target men so when there’s a physical altercation or disagreement between them, the crowd protects the woman and lets her leave, while holding back the man.
It does and whenever these discussions come up they want to act like it's not a problem or a problem everywhere. This crap doesn't happen in the US because you'd get beat, shot, or stabbed. By the victim, bystanders, and maybe the police.
It also doesn't happen in Asia because they take this stuff seriously. Singapore recently introduced caning for online scammers. People always say "that's so inhumane". But they have the lowest crime in the world by some metrics so they have to do it less often AND there are less victims of crime.
In Buddhism there's a concept called "idiot compassion" which is essentially making the mistake of thinking that coddling people and shielding them from hard experiences, conversations, being held accountable, etc. is kind and compassionate. In reality, it's usually much more compassionate to hold people accountable and tell them hard truths. A lot of the western world seems to have lost the plot in this regard.
I came home from work exhausted and bored to the brink of tears, and a neighbor was trying to pick a fight with me. Lord had no mercy on her. I can say I felt way better after
Synergised with colleagues to extract value from commuters. Value accretive over 2 years. Demonstrated ability to convert opportunity into profit. Sharply focused on revenues and the bottom line - but on the district line.
This happened to a black man, a lady tried to steal his bag and kept grabbing it and yanking it. Bystanders punched and assaulted the man and tried to get his bag. Cops showed up and found his stuff in the bag and the lady was oh I mistook it for mine.
It's like that in a lot of places in europe and most of the time this is the same kind of people. Their network is gigantic and everything is about pickpocket, petitions scams and street games. It's a real plague. When you use public transports you must close anything you can and keep your stuff in pockets with your hands inside.
If there only was a state funded institution who are supposed to deal with them. Ah no, they are too busy sweeping rape gangs under the rug and bullying their victims into silence.
I've searched the comments but I dont see what is actually being said. I hear " suhhh dadddd yeah" "took took mom, dad yeah" "took look see" "GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY BAHG" "GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY BAHG"
this happened to us in the metro in Milan, but with a slight variation. Two girls, one of them pulling our carry-on bag from our hands while saying some shit in Italian, which we thought was first maybe she was trying to help with something or what, then the other one silently was opening our purse. fortunately the bag's flap was magnetic and we noticed. That moment when we started yelling pickpocket, they quikcly jumped off the wagon. This all happened in 20 seconds when we were trying to board. They really need a good beating. So shitty people.
Don't confuse Romanians and Roma, the Roma people are sometimes Romanian (not necessarily though) but they represent a very, very small proportion of Romanians. It's a bit like assuming all Americans are native indians.
Source : wife is Romanian, not Roma.
I remember seeing a guy getting aggressively pickpocketed by 3 young women and he bulldozed all 3 of them across the room and started boxing them. They all ran away crying this dude was going full mike tyson on them. It was so brutal i kind of felt bad for the pickpockets during the mauling. Then I realized it’s deserved.
Been 40 years since I first visited Europe 😳 to this day I keep my wallet in my front pocket and have contingency plans in place just in case …
Saw some crazy things back in the 80s in Italy and Spain. Those thief’s are pros and have a system to match.
Lost count of how many shipmates got taken by them.
In the 90s in Naples one female shipmate had her Fanny packed snatched off by moped crew first guy the driver cut her strap and second snagged it.
Took her about 20mins to 1/2 hr to get the bank on the line (no cell phones) they had already maxed her credit cards and tried to transfer money out of her checking ect. 😳
Pick picketing is very regional. There are a few cities like Rome where it's a problem. Most of Europe it is not. For example in nordics people carry their wallets openly in their back pockets. It's dumb but they don't get stolen.
Pickpocketing used to be just as bad in large US cities as it is in parts of Europe. What happened was in the 90s there was a large scale deliberate police crackdown on the practice and because pickpocketing is a skill that needs to be taught that largescale disruption for 10-15 years kinda killed the practice overall.
NYC had a thriving pick pocket population but beyond the crackdown the transition to credit and inflation made it unappealing. Good pick pockets used to be able to walk a subway car taking small amounts from people as they passed, make enough for the day, and no one was the wiser.
Depends, just like anywhere really. In more tourist-heavy places in the US versions of this absolutely happen, but on average I feel like you’re more likely to run into a brute force mugging than some heavily coordinated group.
My wife, who is a lovely and sweet and trusting (and yes maybe a bit naive) person, walked around at the Trevi Fountain with her iPhone hanging most of the way out of her back pocket (in the way that women sometimes do; you’ve probably seen it before) for a while before I finally noticed it and told her she probably shouldn’t do that. I was honestly shocked that she still had it.
You should keep your wallet in your front pocket in any major metro area the world over. I don't walk around San Francisco, Seattle, or NYC without putting everything in hard to reach places. Some of those pickpockets are very skilled.
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