Famous Pickpocket Apollo Robbins Demonstrates Tricks of the Trade | The Tim Ferriss Show

all right so uh what I was talking in the interview about how you get in someone's space so it's helpful to think of their space as kind of like this egg shape right so funny just like my spiders is going crazy right now yeah espe when you the nature what that I could do that to you and you show me where everything is uh Grant it because there's nothing that we're doing to fool anyone so we'll see this I put this is a jacket I brought for you just because people don't wear Jack like that

anymore I've learned they do in New York they do they do do yes yeah but for a lot of hard to find you can have it 40 40 regular the eyes yeah turns out my jeans there it do but there are some things that we put on you wallet we put a pen and the goal of this is I'll talk about the difference of how I steal things and how a thief would steal them on the street okay so we'll show you the difference of a couple of those and how to get in space so

one of the benefits in the way that I steal stuff um as I approach your space so you can feel like the spidey sense going off now and I'm at it I'm at your space now I'm inside of it Square on yes and now I'm out outside of it but that shift is a different thing that a lot of people aren't quite aware of it is but even you see like how I step back with one hip I shift the weight back yeah all those things are intentional to control the dynamic versus squaring up this

way is a different thing yeah and the same thing You' got in martial arts the ability to have that softness is a useful thing sometimes not Telegraph but if I want to get inside the space if I walk up and I walk into your space this way now if I come in and I break on eye contact I share something with you this way it feels fairly natural like we're sharing right right we have Confluence but if I keep eye contact as we go into that that feels bit different and and it can move away

or even if you don't even if you don't move if I if I come here I keep ey contact with you it's really hard not to look at me yeah yeah but try not to so try just so so if I show you a document or something like this and I'm keeping my head it's still the Spidey sent right don't like it so that's a human behavior piece that's normal and what it does is it chops up your attention because you're thinking about other things so at any time where I don't want be focused here

I can just look up just too close yeah and that creates that thing and I'll use that now what if I gave you something and if I put something in your hand now that whatever it is that I give you uh my driver's license say just keep it that way uh but when you go look at that that now creates a frame that works against you because you can't see through your arm so now anything I wanted to extract off this side you wouldn't see same thing if somebody's carrying their cell phone they're looking at

it they can't see this side it's their own manufactured blind spots so being able to extract so a bigpocket would keep a 45 degree angle off the backside or straight behind you and their teammates would be there they might lock an elbow so that you could get the elbow back as during an extraction but that ability to take of a space when I was telling you about the Secret Service when they were approaching uh they stepped back like you did initially they Ste back there this way they pivoted back on one foot yeah right but

why do it yes exactly that yeah uh so in that case said you've been trained I'm not going to be able to do this but you you're rather easy so now when I come to this guy this guy just gave me access so as I do extractions I leave the items underneath my arm and I steal some things out and do it that way so the r that you still like I talked about we mentioned this term kissing the dog all of this when I perform is kissing the dog that's drastically different than the street

right so one of the problems on the stre handicapping yeah it is because you remember me because you now know what I look like so how do I steal from you without you seeing me extract from inside so right now like you have a wallet there so one way to beat that and they call this playing up town in the spot so if I'm playing up toown or playing the pit uh which is a hard extraction one way that I might do that if I have a backpack and if we're in the subway so if

I'm here and I'm in front of you if I I'm going to move you just a little bit this way so the camera can kind of see a little bit better but let's use this pill just as an improvised kind of backpack prop okay so if I'm handing a backpack back to a friend this way now if the subway is compact is tight as I give the this way this now functions lot Lin spot yeah so I can Comm in do an extraction so if I lock in this case we have a pen there if

I lock on the wallet now when I go to take that wallet out I pass that to them and now as this come back as my arm comes down the extraction can be misattributed to my elbow coming down right in terms of the contact and they take that backpack but on the other side they take this wallet off to the side so that's a way that can play just by passing a thing over here broughts you up gets me here and then I pass it back and I can walk away a slight kissing the dog

yeah it's not the full thing first is like with me when I'm stealing I might look to check what somebody has and as I extract maybe for example uh so actually one tip real quick for a big Pockets perspective a bfold wallet like this has names so this part right here is called the feet which is the feet these two parts right here okay this is the head okay so this is it standing on its feet in a pocket this is it standing on its head and this is laying bit okay so if I want

to take it out of your pocket it's better if it's not standing on its head because it can catch and in this case that's why I just detected with the pen is that the pen was inside of it was standing on its head okay so they sometimes would say I need to take it out of bed first so one move one old play would just be taken out of bed moving it to that position the orientation yeah and then stopping waiting it's kind of like sneaking up on rabbits when the antenna goes up you stop

and you wait you do small beats so if I wanted to get into uh this pocket here for example what I might do is I hit the wall so two things I can go in and extract it while I'm talking about the jacket but then I can just leave it in place so now it's clear of the pocket but I'm holding it with my pinky so it's a little DeLay So by setting the time delay I can do something else but now as my jacket that hang goes underneath it's easier to do extraction l or

I can take it up and make it a little bit more showy if I'm showing off for the people around yeah so that's the style it's a little bit more Harlem Globe Trotter yeah and that way doing these type of things but in that I was learning flare bartending to learn how to throw a wallet so all those skills kind of marrying together with a lot of it so I guess if I want to cause problems got feed up you could yes rubber bands do not help for some reason in America there's this rumor that

if you put a rubber band around a wallet makes it hard to come out of a pocket it doesn't they also believe if you put in the front pocket it helps but it doesn't jeans help a little bit because you have to be really intimate with someone to kind of get into the pocket in a performing context I can justify where I'm not talking to you you I can come in you go in your pocket and sometimes get it out that way but jeans are harder than slacks slacks front pocket are extremely easy they get

hit a lot and for p pockets on the street if there's a wallet in the back pocket they'll cut like an l-shape and they just push down and the contents come out us to cut exact change my culture there is a culture in Peru that carry a blade in their mouth and they're amazing at spitting it to their hand so they spit it to their hand slice and put it back so they have it concealed in the mouth my brothers used to do the L cut that's why I know that one so they would cut

with an L they push that way they cut the bottom of a purse and push that that way but there's a lot of those things like one of things that people say well I'll keep my hands in my pocket but they'll do different things maybe they tilt your hat or maybe they do a cigarette burn in the back of the neck you go like that and those little movements are enough for the rest of the team while you tribute that one guy right to do an extraction sometimes One play is that somebody just goes to

take their jacket off and maybe they put their computer bag between their legs and while they're taking their jacket off it occupies them so I've seen that they extract the laptop braid out of a computer bag so you still think you have it while you're taking the jacket off so there's very bold mov because that jacket functions as a shield but it is very improvisational but also the combination of you have to know how to build a plane if you're going to try to build the plane on the way down yeah yeah totally all right

so what else from a concept perspective or technique perspective would form some of the fundamentals uh either what you do or what thieves might do yeah well I'll show you a couple things that are specific to my SL of hand style um one thing is when I'm approaching someone I'm using their hands if if I can see your hand I'll give you something like the coin that we were talking about a while ago if I'm giving you that coin to watch right now it feels like you could turn your hand over but I'm holding on

to your thumb so as you try it doesn't feel like it's being controlled right and as it come same thing if I use this hand so I can control that I can control the speed at which it turns over same thing when I reach for this hand I now stop this elbow from going back so there's all these little mechanics of locking the body up so it thinks it still has choices but it doesn't so you're bifurcating those choices a little bit amazing yeah and a lot of those things if you do this let me

see your hand this way so you can kind of see you can feel the Palm my hand but if you put your hand flat against the back of my hand over there both hands together if I were to get the coin out of my sleeve there it is it goes to your hand do you fill it right there uh just thing right but that comes from kind of and that's the flying up thing they were talking about for long yeah but those mechanics of managing what they're paying attention to but that combined both the controlling

of the movement with also controlling what you feel and don't feel yeah so even though you think you feel everything or you're in control of it you can still manipulate that wow all right how does it change when you have say multiple people and we could use the the pillow as a prop if it's helpful but in terms of navigating space you gave the example of the two Secret Service agents and how you sidled up turning this way to the second agent leaving this guy exposed right under the arm yep any other ways to think

about interacting with multiple people because for you not only are you kissing the dog you might be kiss kissing multiple dogs in the sense that you have witnesses right absolutely or at attention yeah they at attention they're on top of it they're trying to be vigilant trying to be uh so in that context like if I am multiple people if I want to hit this guy but I know want to do the next guy so maybe one move might be if I give him something to pay attention to let's just use like a wallet like

we had before so if I'm going to go after that wallet one thing I can do as I come to pull that here if I take out that he's G be very curious what that is meanwhile the wallet goes because this is that half circle line we were talking about before right if you notice that it draws his attention because it's a strange thing he's trying to do the accounting what is that does that belong to me it's also an unnatural movement in a sense right it is it's it's an inefficient and it's very s

for that reason and if it's if I now pull a straight line though you have both see so you feel the difference I can't do anything with this hand but if I come up this way and draw your attention as you lock onto that and I can feel you locking on I can do the extraction bring it over that way but now in that same way when I say is this yours to this guy where I can say is this yours over there and now as I do that it seems to be gone it's just

underneath my arm but I'll use those kinds of movements as I extract their things and I'll sometimes place it back on the guys so maybe as I ask you to hold on to a thing I leave somebody's wallet underneath your arm yes and they won't know for that the wallet's under their arm as long as they're holding on to that and if they start to move it I just move their elbow I just come back so I'll use their body to hold on to stuff from for a little while too and how do you think

about extractions with say lucier material so front pockets on slacks something like the jacket versus the ring or a watch or something like that it seems From manav's perspective to be more difficult it does uh it just seems like I I imagine most people who are listening who have never had something demonstrated on them like this would say I would know if somebody pulled a ring off my hand I would know if someone took a watch off well like a ring if you have your hands up in the air there's decid that models try to

keep their hands up in the air before they put their hands under a camera because the veins will be less and the blood will flow down because if they have their hands down they'll be a different color and you can kind of test that if you want to feel the difference between the two but there's also this idea that the fingers become tender some people believe that that might be approach what I've seen is like for pal reading is if there's a ring here is trying to hold the hand to read a palm but it

puts him in position for the pinky to grab the ring as well and now maybe I can't read your Lifeline as well so I use a little bit of oil on that so now that oil me see a little bit better but also gives me a little bit of lubrication for that so now when I talk to you about other things I can extract the ring so it's a lot of times about the justification if you were to steal something else like a watch again a different justification so for me if I'm trying to steal

your watch from this position I have to have a reason to touch your wrist or I have to cover it with something else to be able to do extraction on the street an approach might be one they will sometimes do that where they're trying to move someone in this position to get a justification for the watch but another one let's say it's expandable watch that comes over the end of the wrist they would have expand it then you reach inside of a bag and this is in Alejandra I saw this outside of konata SP so

when you come out of there there was these ladies and they had a bag of uh kind of like tea leaves and you reach inside and as you pull those out you're trying to extract a read do a reading about this Leaf but what they do is they expand the watch and when your hand goes inside they leave the watch inside the bag and you take your hand out of the that could be like a Rolex so they get very good at the combination of the mechanics of undoing the Buckle and things like that for

me that's a lot of the things that I would do are different ways to do the Buckle and I'll show one that's not the technique I regularly use but if you do this same kind of a different way if you can imagine shaking hands all these small motions coming through so now somebody still that the watch is there but now as I reach by a jacket it now seems to disappear off there so that's more of a demonstrative way than the way you reg do it but you can see the mechanics that I can unbuckle

the watch give the appearance it's still there and then steal it off FFF it off yeah how would that differ from I mean you don't need to show it if you don't want to but yeah there's a handful that I don't have on camera just yeah it's an interesting thing so when the New Yorker wrote about me versus when they showed it in the video I realized I hadn't stolen in my full speed on camera before and it did affect so a lot of people would watch me and then come see me live and they

would know it's possible so now as I I've developed new steals I tend not to put those on camera the demo steals to show if someone doing show motion it would look like this yeah that makes sense all right well thank you very much anything else that uh we should cover do you feel like that's a good I think ABC good I I think like we talked about some places to keep your stuff this pocket inside is a good place to keep some belongings it makes it hard for people to steal for bit pocketing but

for robbing it's a different thing give up something else give having a second wallet it's a very useful thing the other thing is um there are these Loops type wallets that can attach to your belt and they flip on the inside of the P it's different kind of money belt it's a it's a pouch that loops on and I'm sure you can put this up as learned F shuts yeah and it you flip it out and you put your contents in there just don't use that for your purchases when you go to the bathroom take

out whatever you need out of that and use it but keep another wallet that's there for somebody to steal and it yeah it has some things are meaningless it's just enough for to satiate their curiosity and then the other tip was the coffee cup that if you have rings or unimportant important make the unimportant important just by having an or the important unimportant in this case both sides inside the cop upup is a nice improvised safe that you can use perfect thank you thank you very much really appreciate it that