Pickpockets use much more than sleight of
hand, they hack your
brain’s weaknesses.
My mother has eyes in the back of her head. She
also taught me from an early age to be
suspicious of strange men, especially when they
give you presents. Which makes it all the more
surprising that a “nice man” bearing flowers
managed to swipe #5000 from her purse, while
she was holding it in her hands and looking
straight at it.
“He said he was collecting for a church charity
so I pulled out a #500 note,” she explains. “He said
“no, no, that’s too much” and offered to look in
my purse to find a smaller note. He must have
slid out the #5000 at the same time. I
didn’t even notice until an hour later. I felt so
stupid.”
But she needn’t feel bad. According to
neuroscientists our brains come pretty much
hard-wired to be tricked, thanks to the vagaries
of our attention and perception systems. In fact,
the key requirement for a successful pickpocket
isn’t having nifty fingers, it’s having a working
knowledge of the loopholes in our brains. Some
are so good at it that researchers are working
with them to get an insight into the way our
minds work.
So while sleight of hand helps, it’s as much
about capturing all of somebody’s attention with
other movements. Street pickpockets also use
this effect to their advantage by manufacturing a
situation that can’t help but overload your
attention system. A classic trick is the ‘stall’,
used by pickpocketing gangs all over the world.
First, a ‘blocker’, walks in front of the victim (or
‘mark’) and suddenly stops so that the mark
bumps into them. Another gang member will be
close behind and will bump into both of them
and then start a staged argument with the
blocker. Amid the confusion one or both of them
steal what they can and pass it to a third
member of the gang, who quickly makes off with
the loot.
“People think it’s about distracting someone by
making them look away but it’s actually about
directing the mind towards something,”. If I wanted you to stop looking at something on the table it’s much easier for me to give you a good reason to look at something else. If I give you two or three things to focus on and the one I want you to avoid isn’t one of
them, then that’s even better because now you
have the illusion of choice.”

Other tactics are more psychological.
Pickpockets tend to hang out near ‘beware of
pickpockets’ signs, because the first thing people
do when they read it is check they still have their
valuables, helpfully giving away where they are.
And in my mother’s case, the thief’s best trick
was not coming across like a pickpocket. “He
was a very nice guy and very personable. Not
someone that would cause you to suspect,” she
says.
“They employ some clever tactics. A classic is
that a girl comes up to you outside of a club and
starts talking to you and as she’s doing it she
starts rocking very gently. And the person thinks
they are rocking so they compensate and start
rocking and fall over. And she’s very kind and
she helps you up and maybe her friend helps,
too. You stumble off and the next morning you
realise your watch has gone and your wallet is
gone, everything’s gone.”
Still, knowing about all these tricks can make you
a little less likely to have your valuables pilfered.
At the very least, Brown says, it’s an idea not to
zone out too much in public. “A street thief will
avoid like the plague people who are
demonstrating a very open awareness of their
environment. The man on the tube who is
looking around, being very aware, they won’t go
anywhere near,” And as my mother would no
doubt remind you, it’s also an idea to keep away
from strangers with flowers.

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