The Jordan Harbinger Show - 531: Bob Arno | Schooled by the Professor of Pickpocketry Part Two

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

Bob Arno is a comedy pickpocket and criminologist specializing in global street crime, is the co-author of Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams While Traveling, and was featured in National Geographic's Pickpocket King documentary. [This is part two of a two-part episode. Make sure to catch part one here!] What We Discuss with Bob Arno: How Bob, the son of a judge, got involved in social engineering and pickpocketing for the purpose of entertainment. Why pickpockets are commonly targeted by terrorist organizations for radicalization efforts. How diversionary crime like pickpocketing has changed just like every other profession during the COVID-19 pandemic. How Bob is able to get close to real-life criminal pickpockets and learn their tricks of the trade without winding up in the hospital -- or worse. The psychology of a pickpocket -- what they're looking for in an ideal victim and what you can do to ensure you're not that victim. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/531 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. When they said, hold you up against the mall, when they say, Mother F, give me your wallet. You pull up your wallet that you're prepared, and you have $30 or $20 that you're prepared to give the guy. So you're coming prepared to lose this in case of a confrontation. As far as pickpocketing, three credit cards, American Express, and Master Card, for example, lock the third card into your safe,

in the hotel. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game. Astronauts, entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional former jihadi National Security Advisor or Emmy-nominated comedian. Each episode turns our guest wisdom into practical advice you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. If you're new to the show or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about it. We've got those episodes starter packs. Those are collections of top episodes, organized by topic, to help new listeners get a taste of everything

we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start to get started or to ideally help somebody else get started as well. Love it when you share the show with others. Now this is part two with Bob Arno, the professional pickpocket. If you haven't heard part one, stop this episode right now. Go back and get part one. That's where you're going to want to begin. I'm not going to dilly-dally too much here. Let's go here with part two with Bob Arno. The cell phone market is crazy. My family, my wife's family, they work in that business. And they'll say something like, oh, this month was bad.

We paid $2 million for a batch of phones. And either they never arrived or half of them arrived or they arrived and they weren't usable. Or they arrived and they were, you know, the company said these are all stolen and then they sell them to Africa. And it's like, it's just a crazy black market for these things. And you know, is it an intriguing market, how they all have. go about it. You know, obviously I know during my career some good hackers who have been very good. When they reveal to me, and I'm talking about white hat hacker, even although they started

off as black hat, but that to me is maybe even more fascinating than what we're talking about right here because the intelligence community and everyone, big cooperation, they all want hire the best hacker community because the threat, whether it is from Russia or from China and wherever, whatever country is a lot bigger than some tanks with 16 guys are walking on the border of Ukraine. The threat here in terms of hacking is incredible. Yeah, of course. No, cyber warfare is so interesting.

And I've done a couple shows about that as well. How are thieves communicating during the, you call it the lift, right, where they take the item? There's the blocker who distracts. The guy who steals is called the cannon, right, according to my research. I don't know how they name that. Well, there's a lot in, you know, we have a book and we have a whole chapter just on the lingo. It's called travel advisory. We'll link to that in the show notes.

In it there, we have all of those various slang terms that they're using. I don't, you know, some years ago they did use them very intimately. And each country have their own terms for these terms. So what a good pickpocket will say, the guy who is leading it, He is looking for partners who instantly senses and knows where he should be in relationship to the pickpocket. So, you know, you should, if you're there just to block, you're going to have to have a fifth sense to looking at the victim where the eyes are, friends of partner who are in between. How can I in a natural way, so I don't draw attention too much so it looks like I'm unnatural, so I'm bumbling in and doing something. forceful. How can you be in a semi-smiley kind way reaching for or holding, taking up the newspaper

and just shilling a look and look or a map, a fake map. Very, very common. Flowers are common. And shawl. The most common thing is a shawl. Am I saying it right? Shawl? Yeah, like a big scarf. Yeah. So they have a beautiful shawl, the female, and she will fiddle with it for a second, you know, just flip out as if she's changing it. Well, in that particular little thing there, boom, she just shielded from outside or from the camera what the hand of the thief was doing. Or she may even be good enough if she's working alone at that moment to do it herself. That's interesting. Yeah, I mean, I've had a couple of pickpocket experiences.

One, I was walking in Jerusalem, and it was like a massive crowd in those narrow streets and somebody fell into me. And I reached it and I felt the hand on my pocket. and I turned around and there was somebody in robes like long robes and they were supposed to they were pretending they were an old lady but I knew it wasn't because the hand was so strong. Uh-huh. It was a strong hand and it was like it just didn't make sense. Like there's no chance that this old lady who's hunched over hunchback is that strong. So I grabbed and I squeezed in through my own pocket.

I squeezed and she pulled her hand out and then she just sort of like cut through the crowd all the way towards the wall and went away. And she ended up getting like, not my wallet, but some other garbage thing that I had in there that had rubber bands around it. I don't even remember what it was, but it was junk. And then more recently, I think probably after our first interview, I saw a guy, we were in Switzerland. I was with my family. My dad likes to walk like 20 feet ahead of us because he's not paying attention. And I saw this guy leaning up against the wall, smoking leather jacket. He looked like he'd been awake for about three days with no sleep, you know, and he, it's like 8 a.m., 9 a.m. And he was dressed for the evening, which meant he'd probably been out all night. And he saw

my dad, locked down to my dad. My dad has a giant, you know, map and a bunch of crap sticking out of his back pocket. My dad's 77 years old, whatever. And he's walking. And I notice him because he doesn't realize we're together. Because again, my dad walks like 10, 15 feet ahead of us. And I said, Mom, that guy's a pickpocket. And my mom said, what are you talking about? The guy almost burned you with a cigarette. He's not paying attention. He's a pickpocket, and he's going after dad. And I walked up to the guy, and I said, excuse me, do you know how we get to?

And he was like, looking at me, looking at my dad, and he tried to ignore me. And I said, excuse me, do you know how to get to such and such, whatever? And he just looked at my dad and he went, I said to himself, screw it, because my dad was too far away. And I said, Dad, Dad, let's get directions. And the guy just walked away. He pretended like he didn't understand me. But I knew he was going for my dad. You know what you should have said is, by any chance, do you know Bob Arna?

Yeah, I will. Next time I'll do that. I'll say, do you know Bob Arno? Yeah, I didn't want to get stabbed, but I just did the first thing I could think of. No, no, there's no question of that. There is a percentage of violence. Let me go back to a couple of points here. The first thing, if you're traveling to a new area that you haven't read about,

and I would suggest strongly that you first go and read a little bit about your destination, There are State Department and other, you know, they give you those easy hints of what the percentage is. Because if you're going to go up in Norway to Stavanger, you're not going to get pickpock. Well, nothing is impossible. Everything can happen. But there are some area where we simply culture and the way for the thief to coming in and survive there are so slim that he's not going to make that as a destination. So reading up in advance is smart. when you arrive into the destination, ask the Frontesque, how careful do I need to be daytime with my wallet?

What area should I avoid? And in the night, should I take a taxi for that restaurant or can I walk back home? Because you take a place like Barcelona. It's night and day at 11 o'clock in the day and 11 o'clock in the evening. Some of those very fashion, born, for example, born area, there are lots of. of criminal activity there, whether it is drugs or simple mugging. Mugging is just as prevalent as pickpock, or maybe even more so. You get shoved into the ground and they grab it or they show you the knife and say,

give me the wallet. It means, don't mess with me. Pass it over. Having that information, you don't necessarily always get in a tourist brochure, but getting it from the front desk is really, really smart. Getting a little bit of pre-information, have what I would call give up money. If you're going into a territory where you hear, let's say you are on a safari down in South Africa, and it doesn't necessarily have to be just South Africa, be any of the countries around, you know,

whether it is Mozambique or Lusaka or whatever, if you're going on a small safari, extensive one, and then you don't have to worry because the travel organizers making sure that your car isn't going to be stopped and carjacked and whatever. But when you're privately before, a few days before and a few days after, have gone. give up money. And that means money that you can, when they said, hold you up against the mall, when they say, mother F, give me your wallet. You pull up your wallet that you're prepared, and you have $30 or $20 that you're prepared to give the guy. So you're coming prepared to lose this in case of a confrontation. As far as pickpocketing, three credit cards, American Express, and Match the card, for example, whatever. The third one is doesn't really matter.

Lock the third card into your safe in the hotel as long as you're young enough to remember, damn it, that you have a wallet there with a credit card, right? And if you lose your wallet, now you have the third card until you can go and report an embassy and get the report and so forth. Have a copy of your passport and all of the information on a website where you have access to and where you can drag it out. In case of something goes bad, you can drag it out. to the embassy and you said, here's a digital copy of my thing. Instantly, within 24 hours,

you have a new one versus having to wait a long time. As to how you dress, I would say that any pocket that is fairly loose, you take a guy who is 50 years old and he's not wearing jeans, the front pockets where they are slanted, slightly loose, is a piece of cake. There isn't a pickpocket who is worth his gold or whatever, who couldn't. get in there and lift it, it's easier than a hip pocket, because the hip pocket is slightly more contracting around it. If you are going on subways, stay away from the doors, because that's where they're going to hang, because once they got something, they want to get off. So get in a tad and maybe have a hand over the wallet while you are entering that really crowded scene,

as long as you are in balance to holding on to polls and other things. But while you're you're going in and then analyze around what is there that is nearby me. How crowded? Is it like sardines? Well, then you have to be careful. Female handbag, have your arm squeezed around it, the opening all the time. If it's one of those handbag that is open at the top without the zipper and you just shove things down and not, realize that if you have your phone in there and it's at the top piece

of cake, have it maybe underclothes or a shop, whatever you have in that bag. the bottom. When you're in a big market, let's say in Madrid, you were in one of those food markets and you're having a lunch there and you're leaning over to pick something up. Whenever your arms are out like this, whether it's a hotel lobby, that's when you're out here, you're not sensing what's going on. When your arms are out. Yeah. That makes sense. There's a lot of tips and things like that in some of the videos that I watch. And I'm finding it fascinating. And I've talked about this before with you long, long time ago, you made that little, I guess it's a documentary where you actually

go to Naples to crack open the den of the best pickpockets and thieves. Tell me about this. Tell me about Angelo and all these guys. These guys are crazy. Yeah, it's called pickpocket king. And it was made by National Geographic. And my dream was meet the best pickpocket in Europe, maybe in the world, and have dinner with him and his team and see if he is. And see if he is, is prepared to spill his guts. First of all, they said, what's it? I'm going to do it in Paris, in Rome, whatever. I said, you know, I think Naples is the best one because it's almost like a national sport to do pickpocketing. So then what they did to make sure that they had a film, they went to the police and said, could you give us some old pickpockers who has been arrested

And can you guarantee that they will talk to Bob Arno? They paid to find these people. That doesn't make for a great film to have guys who are not a baker or some or, you know, food or designer. But he used to be 15 years ago, a good tip-back. Maybe it's part interesting, but it's not what the film is about. So when they had that secure, they came back and said, one of the things that we wanted to do also was to put two team together to compete, where I was in one and the other team. who could steal the most. But of course, have everything returned?

The idea is that the public, who is watching it, should see how damn easy it can be. The moral aspect was that I didn't want to come across so that the viewers are saying, there's no question about it. Bob Arna was a real street thief before. And now he went straight. So it was very hard for me to prove that in the film. But in any case, we went there. and they had big cameras.

And so when I was in the airport, they met me and they had a big camera and said, blah, blah, how are you? What's going to happen here? And everyone around know that was a film team. I said, in this time when it was made, Hero had come on the market. That's a small little digital camera. Oh, the GoPro, yeah. Bambi and I, my wife, we were used with filming very, very small cameras inside our bags

and fanny packs and whatever. So in any case, I said, get rid of that while we are. until we have the good, have we caught some guys. So we went out, couldn't see anything, nothing happened. And on the third day, suddenly I am inside on a bus already, and I see three guys coming into the middle door. And the first thing I see is they do this. Looking around.

And my team is about 20 feet down with some small cameras. Three guys are coming through the middle door of the bus. as it opened up. And I'm seeing them glancing left and glancing right. You know, they're standing straight, but their eyes are doing this. And there's no smile. They're really looking, intensely looking. These are thieves.

But that doesn't mean they're going to go to me and steal from me, right? Right. So I am talking to my wife, Bambi, and I'm really cheery as if I haven't the faintest idea that these guys are thieves. Bingo. It's like, you know, you remember that? That old pop-up I film where the eyes used to pop out like this. Oh, yeah, sure.

Boing, yeah. That's the reaction on these guys. So they're coming up. And it's fairly loose around me. There's not too many people. So they have to create their own little crowd. They are four in this team. So two people who are not doing the stealing are kind of angling up and leaning against,

you know, very, very nearby. And then they're coming up and they're stealing. I don't feel a thing. I know it's happening, but I don't feel the actual extraction. So I don't get that the finger. But one of my team members who stands a little foot is actually getting the lift. So now we're getting off. And now I brush.

I say, aha, the wallet is gone. So now I know they have it. Now I can't start talk to them on the bass because they're going to say, what, me? Or they drop bigger on their floor. So we have no film. So I want them to leave. the bus without them thinking that I know.

They leave out and they watch me. And just as the door is about to close, I moved out and kind of moves it out. But they're already out, so they can't get back off. And then I go back up and I smile like hell. And I hold up my phone. And I say, I'm from Las Vegas. And you see this huge faith. And I'm holding my phone.

I said, I do the same. And I'm starting a film, a video of a Las Vegas thing where I'm stealing. And they're looking and suddenly they realize I'm a pickpocket, but on stage. Right. And as I'm holding up, as he's grabbing my phone to hold it to look at it, I take his watch. I steal his watch. Now, wait a minute. My guys who is going to film, they are much further away.

They are not getting this footage of me stealing. But Bambi, my wife, knows what is happening. So her handbag has a small handbag with one of those small cameras inside. So she is filming it as I'm stealing the watch. Sees it goes away a minute later, his reaction. And he goes, wow! And he is super excited that I stole his watch. So now we start talking.

Now, I don't speak enough Italian. So we have planted on the ground here, rather, one of my team member, I tell him, whenever we have this happen, step aside. So he sits on the ground about 20 feet away from where I'm standing with his cluster saying, I'm from Las Vegas and a showman. I take a regular guy who walks by and I stop him and I say, do you speak a little English? Can you help me translate? He said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I wanted the thieves to think that I needed someone translate and anyone would do. So I say to one of the pickpockets, what about that guy? Can we get him?

So the pickpock said, do you speak a little English? And he's sitting on the ground. He's our translator. He said, yeah, why? Come here, come here. And he comes in. And now they say, let's go and have coffee together. They're saying. So we start the conversation.

And from there on, we build. over two weeks closer and closer and closer relationship. But the guy I really want to meet this guy, he's not the best one. I know who is the best guy. So on the third week in Naples, on a tram, I see my guy working. And now I approach him. And I say, do you remember me from 10 years ago? We met here, blah, blah, blah.

And then he looks at my wife. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we get him to meet up for the, this dinner. So we get 20 of the best pickpockets in Naples to come and have dinner together. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Bob Arno. We'll be right back. Now back to Bob Arno on the Jordan Harbinger Show. They didn't think it was a police operation or something like that? No, wait, wait, wait, that's a good, good, good question. So one of these guys will not permit any camera work.

Yeah, okay. All the time. He said, if you're on camera, you have to face it out. So the others, the one who were that I had the first encounter who took my wallet, is wearing an ankle bracelet, you know, police thing. And he is not allowed to be out from 9 to 5 anywhere in the center of Naples. Wow. And he knows that he stole from me.

He doesn't know that we have caught him on camera. All he knows, he stole and he should. couldn't be that. Right. Yeah. So we're saying to him, what do you think here that if we do a thing where you, we do a little documentary and at the end, so he doesn't think that I have footage of him stealing. All he knows is he's met me.

And we're saying, would you do a little telling the public how not to be a victim? Maybe that could help you with judges and lawyers and so forth. Right. Yeah. Be the good guy. Great idea. He buys into this and he tells his team. So we get the team to agree to this lunch and dinner, whatever you want to call it,

with the understanding that the police are now going to look at them more favorable because they have always torn and they are revealing things and it will help, you know, tourism. He has no idea that I had that footage. A year later when we came back for Christmas, especially, with him. He said, Bob, I agreed to that film, but I would never have agreed to that if I had known that you had that footage. That wasn't so good for me. So he was upset that I had kind of pulled the rugged from under him. Did these guys have any moves that you hadn't seen before? Yes, yes, yes. So they are able to, let's assume that the victim stands here.

on my left. Okay. And the pickpocket is here, like I am here now. And there's a pole here. The pickpocket hole, let's assume we're on a bus or in a supermarket, it doesn't really matter. But I'm doing something with this hand, this hand here, that the thieves can see up here in full view with everything here.

And the victim is beside me, and he wants to go into his right pocket, whether it's hip or front, doesn't really matter. This hand, the right hand, going. was behind and he's able to go in with his right hand behind him into that pocket with a little bit on nudging. Wow. And now when we had the dinner with all of the thieves, they got so excited to show me the moves that one after another they're jumping up and they're showing me this move.

And I'm saying, they must have been doing this since they were seven years old. There's nowhere in hell they could do that otherwise if they were not. doing it forever. Right. I mean, they're reaching behind their back going into somebody else's pocket, grabbing the wall. In the opposite side. Right. In the opposite side.

That's crazy. Now, did they have a few other things that were cute and so on? You know, that I heard rumors of. So some of these guys, for example, I don't mean lately. But when they were in their prime, when they were maybe 29 to 30 years old, when Germany had big markets where they sold used cars, secondhand cars, where maybe 600 cars, you know, over a weekend are suddenly sold in some sort of auction in Stuttgart or Berlin, whatever. There would be coming in very wealthy buyers from Russia, and they would buy lots of 60 cars

or huge, huge numbers, lots of lots of it. So suddenly there's a tremendous amount of money changing hands. So these dealers, would be having maybe half a million on them or whatever, a lot of money. They would go to Switzerland and deposit. And they would, the crime syndicates would know where they would depose because they didn't want the Russian regime to know where they parked their money. Right. The thieves in Naples, the syndicate, would send teams in to surround this guy, this Russian

guy and lift it. And the moves that they did was. because I happen to see one of those moves from a Swiss law enforcement film when the guy comes in on a tram. And there are two guys on either side of this victim. And the way there was none of this usual pickpocketing move, the elegance was unbelievable. I had to look at it at least 10 times before I could see what the hell did I see. It's wild. The amount of skills, it's sort of a shame, right? Because these guys are in many ways as good as any world-class performer, but really they're just an inefficiency in the economy and stealing from people. I mean, do these guys express sort of remorse that this is all they really do for a living? Yes, very much so. Because especially when they are hitting 45, 50, they feel that they have destroyed not much reputation in the family, but respect from their children. Because the children today in modern Italy are going in a different direction.

Either a priest takes care of them because they come from poverty, so sometimes there is a support system around them. They feel that they have almost destroyed that respect from their own children towards them. And they would love to do something else if they could. When I go and talk to them, it's very, very often. The first thing we talk about is the unease inside. The same thing with some of the Romanians. For example, a Romanian thief male.

And some of them are very charming, by the way. And that goes for the territory. Charming because they have to engrace themselves and, you know, read very quickly. There's a very good smile and like a ping pong very quickly, bufoo, boom, back and forth. There's nothing slow. They say they can never tell a girlfriend that they are a thief. Because the minute they do, the girl loses respect for them.

And so it's very hard for them to build a natural, real good relationship with someone. That totally makes sense. I wonder, are these guys, are they faster than you? Are they the same speed as you? Do you think that you, I'm wondering, like, what you see in terms of skill? Well, here's what you have to remember that I have done this longer than any of these guys. Sure. Because I don't have the fear factor of being serving time in jail.

That makes sense. So I started at 18 and, you know, I'm still doing it. So I have the psychological skills maybe better than they do, meaning as I evaluate my people, as I see them walking up on stage or whatever it is or when out, if I'm out in a law enforcement, there have been times, for example, in law enforcement some years ago where in Latin America, they asked me, and I'm talking about not the law enforcement there, they were having banks where money from Colombia was deposited by drug cartel people. And the people that were in their country, but belonging to the Colombian cartel, they were

very vicious. They sometimes caught them garotting and doing very nicely things. But one of them, for example, was wearing a fake passport. and when he came in, it was so good that immigration could not detect that it was false, but they know it was false. They didn't want to go to the guy and say, we're going to grab your passport because then they wouldn't know where it was made. They wanted to look at it without tipping off the other side.

So they asked me, could I put together a team and steal the passport from this guy so that they could get their hands on it in order to then. you know, see because they were concerned, of course, of if this guy is making such good passport, is it made in Russia, where are they made? And how come we can't detect the details? So you got hired by a government to go steal a passport from another criminal? Let's say that I won't go any further on this story. Okay, I got it. I want to say where it is and nothing further. I just, it's a semi-amusing up to this point anecdote, but we won't, we won't go beyond this.

part here. But I get it right, because you all probably always wondered, all right, I'm on stage, I'm stealing belts, watches, whatever, but can I do it on the street? I have asked myself that all the time. All the time. Up until the film, by the way, it's shown in the film, because that was part of the film. I said to myself, can I or can I not do it as well as they do? And so I am doing it in the film, but there's a difference. I talked to the victim and pickpockets don't. So, for example, there was an amendment. American or Canadian tourist entering up on a bus. And my little team, I said something to the guy.

I said, watch your hand there or that bag. You know, a little small verbal thing to distract when I was lifting. Pickpockets don't talk. They lift and do everything silent. They may create a small diversion, but they're not doing anything. They're not chatty. Yeah. So in some sense, you could say, there are some.

some thieves in Latin America and in Barcelona that come from South America where they squeeze some lung pigeon poop on you from a little small bag. You don't sense it from behind. And then they wait two minutes or whatever and they come up from another side and say, look, can I help you brush it off? So now they have verbal contact and they can touch here while they're doing the stealing. There there are words going back and forth. But generally speaking, that does not happen. So my point here is, what can I do and what can I not do? Psychologically, yes.

In terms of going to an inside pocket like the Russians can do, I couldn't do. I can bump into the guy as he's coming up on the ladder and there's a bit of a physical contact and lifting it. It's nowhere near as elegant as that guy. So there are certain moves and certain things that I do from pockets and so forth that are as good or better than 90% of street pickpockets. But if you measure me against the very, very best in each country, I'm going to be a couple of pinhole below.

The good pickpocket respect me for my skill. And they say, Bob, I don't understand how in the hell did you get this skill. They are in all. Right. Like how do you practice without actually stealing? Well, it wasn't practice it maybe the wrong word because there is no way. where you can practice. You do it in real thing. So you gradually do it. But in my case, when I was young, 25, 30 years old, they would catch me in the middle of the show, say, you know, whatever.

They would catch me. And I would learn from my mistakes. It's obvious. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Bob Arno. We'll be right back. Thank you once again so much for listening to the show. I know these two partners can be a beast. I told you it'd be worth it. And it is. By the way, if you're looking for the sponsors, I know there's a lot of codes, there's a lot of URLs. We throw those all on one page. Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals is where you'll find them. So the codes are easy to find. We appreciate when you support those who support us. Don't forget, we've got worksheets for many episodes. So some of the drills, exercises talked about during the show, those are often in one easy place. Not every episode has them, but many do.

The link to the worksheets is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. All right. Here we go with the rest of my conversation with Bob Arno. That's so interesting. I think the whole idea of being a professional stage pickpocket, finding the real street pickpockets, befriending them, and then learning their techniques and having that almost in the film, and I'll link to the film in the show notes because it's on YouTube, having almost like a trade convention at that cafe. I mean, that must have been, you looked like you were probably happier there than you probably have been in met. It's got to be one of the top ten experiences for you.

Well, you know, funny you should say that because sometimes I think back what are the 10 most, the moments in my life that have been unbelievable crowns of certain things. I had a very famous photographer who was my friend, Life, Time Life in 1963. And I was with him and one more photographer where the immolation, the suicide burning of the monk in Saigon. So I took that picture with two of the other guys. That was a height. I didn't create that myself. It happened because at 4 o'clock in the morning, I was asked by this guy, do you want to come along, Bob, come along, you know, and they took out.

I was there at the right moment. And then I had a guy called Lord Moynihan, a very famous financial advisor to famous, famous, famous drug lord. At the time, he was my manager, not the drug lord, but the other guy. And I got into the life. And that is created door openers for law enforcement later. on. So there has been various moments in my life where unbelievable scenarios, you know, the Teflon dawn in New York where I worked in a small club. I was working in Atlantic City for about two months, but never over the weekend, because I wasn't big enough of a name. So my agent said,

hey, I can book you in a club in New York on Saturday, Sunday or Friday Sunday. I said, okay, great. I walked in. I walked on the first day in into this club, and it may be only 60 seats. They said, whatever you do, when you do your show at 11 o'clock, don't touch that table. Can't touch anyone at that table. I said, why is that? Never mind, don't touch anyone. So I'm doing my show and halfway through, and gradually, it's a long table, 10 people or whatever. And there's a guy at the head, but they came in slowly during the evening.

So in the beginning there's no one, then two, then four, then six, whatever. And these were guys, lieutenant of the triumph, Crenneset, in 1983 in New York. when this took place, who controlled sections of New York. So these are like mafia five families guys? Mafia got, right? Which is obviously why I wasn't supposed to touch anyone. Right. So in the middle of my show, one of the guys said,

you can't do that on me. That is so phony. There is not. And he kept taunt to me and he kept doing this. And finally I said to myself, screw you the management. I am going to take this guy up. And he has this shock thin, shining.

gray suit. You know what I'm talking about? That is so typical. Yeah, yeah. It's really hot stuff in those years. Yeah. And as I'm holding my hand on his left shoulder to sort of see his body language, so I am stealing with my right hand and I'm over here. And every time I move somewhere, he's right there with his hand. And then he smiles back to his guys over at the table, meaning, see, he's trying here, but I am one step ahead of him. So when I steal the tie, it's done from behind from under the coffin, gradually slowed up. So I said to myself, I won't take the tie, but if I'm starting to put my hand here, he's going to feel it.

So I'm just, I pretend to go for something else, aiming all the time for the inside here, all the time he's dad. And every time he's making his move here, I'm jerking another half inch of the tie out of the knot. Finally, the whole skinny part is out. The knot is here and the white part. And the rest is hanging behind. And I'm saying to him, so are you okay now? And he's looking down.

Yeah, I'm okay now. Okay, you can go back. And as he's about to move, I steal the tie. He has no idea. Works back. He sits down and he goes, see, blah, blah, blah. And I'm holding it up. The rest, the nine guys at the table, including the boss, they go absolutely eight shit of

smiling. They think this is the funniest thing they've ever done. Now, from here on in, every weekend, when these guys, came in with new lieutenant, this boss, this guy is saying, make sure through the method D that he takes one of my guys. Yeah. They insist on it. At the end of my two mums, I'm saying, sorry, this is my loss or whatever.

One of them, not the main guy, calls me over to a side table and he said, I want you to know he, the boss here, he really likes you. Here's a name and a phone number. you run into any problem, just call this number and we'll take care of it. Wow. I assume you never had to call that number. Correct. Well, I did have to use it as a mini threat.

So I'm on Royal Caribbean a few years later. That's a cruise ship and I'm performing. And I'm doing it two weeks in a row. And there is a guy from Chile who is crew member on board, dance or whatever. and they have a show for the audience where all of the people who work on board who can, whether they're sing or dance or whatever, they do a one-hour show.

And this guy is doing a little magic show and he steals one of my stunt and he puts it into his show. And when I come back on board, the others people who work on board and he took it from your show. Maybe you shouldn't do it in your own show because the audience said,

so I confront him. And he says, Yeah, and what are you going to do about it? The next week I come back, I say to these guys, his friends, every Saturday, the ship are coming into Miami. And you have to get off your ship and you're going to buy some shaving cream and the newspaper and some fruit or whatever. You're going to go off here.

I have a number here. And I may have to call in a favor if you don't take that thing off and he took it off. Because he didn't want to test you. That's funny. He thought, oh, this isn't real. this is, why would you have a mafia number? And they thought, do I want to play the ads on this one? I don't know.

That's funny. I wonder if the number still works. You ever try it? Just see if it still works. You know, I have friends who worked sometimes did favors for them. And of course, in the early time of my career, I worked a Latin court in New York and other, a lot of those joints were run by. And if you, and if they liked you, they would forever ask you, they would have a bar mitza or a

special birthday, they would fly you in and you would have to be that. But you never got paid, but you were always asked, hey, do you want to be part of this? So I never called up that number. And further on, obviously, the secondary aspect of who is listening in, taping on whatever. Sure. You would have to be pretty stupid if you ask for a favor from one of those guys. That's a good point. Hadn't thought about that. That's why I'm not a criminal. Did you ever find out who that boss was? Yeah, that wasn't Teflon. Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, I only, they never saw, I just recognized. I mean, I looked at him and I could see, you know, later from photos and so on.

It didn't register on the day that I saw him, but then later when he was in the news, I put the two and two together. So that's John Gotti for people who don't know, just in case you needed a, just in case that you needed a more stereotypical. He's not alive. No. Yeah. No, but who knows who picks up that phone now?

It's probably a defunct bar that isn't there anymore. You know, it's been 40 years. Well, thank you so much, Bob. This is always fun. I'm telling people definitely go into our show notes, watch this film will link up. It's probably still on YouTube, right? Is that National Geographic?

Yeah, it has 8 million views. Yeah. It's called, if you do a search on YouTube, all you have to do is say, pickpocket king, those two words. You miss, if you spell it wrong, if you get some competitor, some guy who is unhappy that it has 8 million views.

But no, it's very, very popular. You can also go to something called thiefhunters.com, spell that right. And there you have a site where we have catalogs of various things, where we have met with things, and we reveal and how you should behave in different. It's kind of almost like a podcast, news things, little snippets with things. So, yeah, there's a lot out there about me that you can search for. Great. Bob Arno, thank you very much.

We'll link to all your stuff in the show notes. This is always so fun and entertaining. And one day I hope to run into you and then, like, see how this all works. Because, you know, it's so hard to imagine it happening to you. But obviously, if you can do it to John Gotti, you can do it to anybody. No, it wasn't him who was up. It was one who is left and none. Right.

Sure. If it was to him, maybe I wouldn't be sitting here in the chair. I would have one hand. Yeah, yeah. You'd only have one hand. It's a lot harder. You'd figure it out. You'd still figure it out.

Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Love, by the way, all the people that you have. And the edge of us, you know what? I really, really, as a guy who specialised in checking on con man, is how you have found people who are on the cutting edge of crime that we should understand a little bit more about. And I could tell you that John Le Carre, the author, the English guy who died just recently,

he has, in his memoir, he has explained how he got close to people, how he fished up, how he got them to open up, how he got his building block. it's very similar in my field. You have to have a curiosity. You have to be able to make your opponent think that it's a great guy to ping pong with. If you come across like a stiff doing interrogation like this, nothing is going to happen. And you're good at that. Oh, thank you very much.

I appreciate it. I wasn't sure if you were talking about me or talking about yourself. I couldn't tell for me. I'm drawing the two together. I'm saying here that you have got a fabulous field that I think can just get bigger and bigger. Thank you very much. I look forward to meeting you in real life once we're allowed out of the house. Thank you. I've got some thoughts on this episode, but before we get into that, here's a preview of my

conversation with an expert who spent more than two decades rooting out the counterfeit goods and services that fuel a trillion dollar industry that only benefits petty crooks and organized crime networks. It's not just handbags or designer clothes. Alcohol, makeup, even cancer medication are just the tip of the iceberg of what gets counterfeited. Here's a couple of Quick listen. Anything and everything is counterfeit from automobile parts, cancer medication, alcohol, kids coughs are up. I mean, anything that somebody can fake to make money, they're going to do it.

I mean, we found human feces, rat feces, and carcinogens in some of the counterfeit makeup. It's really, really scary. I mean, people can actually die or really get harmed over this stuff. The general public thinks, oh, it's poor people just trying to get by, trying to make a living. But somewhere down the chain, a criminal organization is involved in. that counterfeit item. The sales of counterfeit goods is actually listed in Al-Qaeda's training manual

on a quick and easy way to raise revenue for operational purposes. Because why? It's a crime that's completely worth doing for them where they can make huge amounts of money. And then let's look at the human impact. Where are these goods made? Chinese kids in these factories in the middle of nowhere. There was an investigator online who said he was about to do a raid with the police and he heard children's music and he thought, oh, wow, they have child care for their workers and then when they came in, they found a bunch of kids at sewing machines, handcuffed to the machines, and he said the smell was unbearable because they weren't allowed to go to the bathroom.

The common perception, oh, it's poor people just trying to get by or trying to make a living. It's really not the case. I mean, this stuff's tied to organized crime, criminal cartels. I mean, there's a whole big picture behind this stuff. You will see law enforcement do seizures where they're pulling three million cash out of someone's house.

And that's all the proceeds from counterfeit goods. When you're buying that item, You are contributing to that child labor. You're contributing to that terrorist organization. That is where the money is going, undoubtedly. Even if you don't care that the Gucci bag you got for just 20 bucks can't be spotted as a knockoff by the snootiest in your circle of friends, hear why the trillion-dollar counterfeiting industry should concern you.

Check out episode 308 of the Jordan Harbinger Show with Chris Buckner. I just love this stuff. Bob's a fascinating guy. We are friends now. He is quite the character. I've never knew there were different styles of pickpocket. I guess that's not something the layman really knows. Bob was telling me that the Roma, sort of the,

some folks say gypsy, we don't say that anymore. The Roma pickpockets are more brazen. They're more sort of gutsy. The older Italian, it's a little more chill, it's a little more smooth, a little more slight a hand. It takes a lot more time to perfect that skill. And so maybe that's the difference there. Younger Roma, by the way, don't get sentenced as hard under the law.

So they tend to be younger and more aggressive because they really don't, there's kind of no teeth to the law that stops them from doing this, which is why it's so pervasive, or one reason why it's so pervasive. In fact, when I was researching this episode, Jen told me that her family got pickpocketed when she was little, they squirted ketchup all over her. And when she told her grandma that that happened, her grandma started to clean the ketchup off of her, and that's when they went into her handbag and lifted it. It's kind of an interesting trick that is still, by the way, in use. Also of note, stage pickpockets,

so performers, they won't steal Rolex watches because you have to break the strap in order to do it, or one of the pins in the strap. And, you know, people don't take too kindly when you you break their, what's a Rolex, like 10, 20 grand, when you break their $20,000 watch, which probably has a really expensive as watch band, people don't appreciate it too much. You get less applause, especially from that guy. And by the way, random tip to see if an area is safe to walk in at night at hotels, you know, we usually go like, oh, I'm just going to ask the concierge. The concierge's grew up differently, right? They're often a little bit more educated or a lot more educated. They're multilingual. They're inside all day. The porter, the guy facing the street, he usually

grew up, not necessarily on the street, but definitely in the city. You know, these are usually guys that are starting off. They're also looking at the street every day, all day long. They see all the characters walking by. And more importantly, they know how the streets change and the characters on the streets change after sundown. So you can actually find a lot of good intel from hotel porters, not just about crime, but about pretty much everything. When I was in Cuba, we would ask the concierge and the people in the hotel where we could get the best food. And so they never had a good answer. They always sent us to these touristy-ass restaurants. When we asked the Porter where we could get good food, he sent us to a bunch of underground restaurants and called

friends that would drive us around and take us to their houses. I mean, it was a totally different experience. So, uh, the Hotel Porter, secret weapon. Who knew? Links to everything Bob Arno is going to be in the show notes. Please do use our website links if you buy books from the guests because that always helps support the show. Worksheets we put in the show notes. Transcripts are in the show notes. There's a video of this interview going up on the YouTube channel. Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube is where you can find it. We've also got a brand new Clips channel with cuts that don't make it to the show. Highlights from interviews you can't see anywhere else. Jordan Harbinger.com slash clips is where you can find that.

Also, I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram or hit me up on LinkedIn. Love talking with you there. Speaking of connecting, I'm teaching you how to dig the well before you get thirsty and create those relationships before you need them. Using the same system software, tiny habits that I use, that's at the six-minute networking course, and the course is free. I don't charge, I don't need your credit card, none of that drama. Jordan Harbinger.com slash course is where you'll find that, and most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course. So come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong.

This show is created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jay Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Millio Campo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who's into magic, slight a hand, pickpockets, crime, intel. This is a fascinating topic. I hope you share it with them. Hopefully you find something great in every episode of this show. That's certainly the idea. So please share the show with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen. And we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part

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