Foreign Pickpockets at Soi Bukhao market

jsflynn603 · April 5, 2014

OP, you should have knocked him to the ground, and then done in front of all and sundry, some ""classic"" finger-pointing.

Good opportunity wasted.

Good advice or maybe not. Spain has a terrible problem with professional pick-pockets.

http://www.expatica.com/es/lifestyle_leisure/blogs_photos/From-Barcelona_-The-plague-of-the-pickpockets.html

That's not the link that I wanted, sadly I could not find the one that had many amazing tales of how the pros worked. Often, at least there, though there may seem to be only two there might actually be three or four, since the goal is to make things disappear very, very fast in case the pick gets caught. So one acts to knock you off guard, the second picks you, but then almost immediately passes the wallet to a third, and sometimes that to a fourth. Knock the pick to the ground and you might feel a stiletto piercing your kidney from behind.

There is no end to dishonesty these days and many are smart.

Scammers everywhere these days, I own apartments and am so sick of the (usually) Ruskie scammers, supposedly American coming back to America and needing an apartment--they will send you a bank check for an apartment, in my case for 1st and Security, so let's say $1600, then you receive a certified bank check via postal service for $3200. "Oh, how terrible, I made a mistake, please send the extra back, but keep $200 for your trouble." So the hit deposits the bank check, the clerk at the bank smiles, and the balance increases $3200. "All is fine," says the hit, the money is there, might as well send back $1400 and keep the $200 for my trouble. So the hit sends the money back Western Union--bye bye. Four to six days later the check gets returned as fake. Hit's bank account drops $3200 plus overdraft fees, and scammer is laughing with the $1600 profit.

This scammer purports to be from "i was born and brought up in Thailand I'm 29 years old of age.,I'm caring person.I don't drink nor smoke,I need to secure this room for myself before my arrival ,I will arrive in two weeks time and i will stay in the house for 12 months during my stay i will be working with General hospital for Medical Research work (the MRC) I'm coming for cancer research prevalence rate in the States"

*lol* Ain't no such hospital in America, so I wrote this, any person born and brought up in Thailand can at least come up with a response to this even if they can't read/speak Thai, they'd ask someone:

"ชายหาปลาคนหนึ่งออกไปสุ่มปลาแถว ๆ หลังวัดตอนใกล้รุ่ง ? that should be easy...."

No response, but she sent the check, "Good-day ,The payment has been sent via USPS which will deliver tomorrow ,Here is the payment tracking number 9405501699320018148100"

It's a real USPS tracking number. Look it up...somehow stuck in limbo. Somehow they caught onto my game and somehow--I don't know how, stopped the USPS packet. Even my local postmaster can't figure that one out. I was here waiting with an Iodine fuming kit and enhancer to pull fingerprints off the check, then I would have deposited it, but told her, "oh, can't do Western Union, but I'm only willing to mail cash to any US PO" (the packet from them came from CA). Had they taken the bait, I'd have had fingerprints and their photos picking up the empty "cash payment." USPS takes mail fraud very seriously and would follow up, a fair chance that someone would get deported. My local postmaster told me that he sees several complaints on this particular scam every year.

Not particularly dangerous:, filtered through Craiglist email, tossabledigits phone number, fake name. Usually the scammers are Russian, they won't travel that far...the trick is to inconvenience them.

Maybe you can rig up a sort of rat trap that fits in the pocket... fingers go in...............snap. The world needs more scam-baiters.

jsflynn603 · April 5, 2014

OP, you should have knocked him to the ground, and then done in front of all and sundry, some ""classic"" finger-pointing.

Good opportunity wasted.

Good advice or maybe not. Spain has a terrible problem with professional pick-pockets.

http://www.expatica.com/es/lifestyle_leisure/blogs_photos/From-Barcelona_-The-plague-of-the-pickpockets.html

That's not the link that I wanted, sadly I could not find the one that had many amazing tales of how the pros worked. Often, at least there, though there may seem to be only two there might actually be three or four, since the goal is to make things disappear very, very fast in case the pick gets caught. So one acts to knock you off guard, the second picks you, but then almost immediately passes the wallet to a third, and sometimes that to a fourth. Knock the pick to the ground and you might feel a stiletto piercing your kidney from behind. (as Soihok previously pointed out).