The Science Behind Pick Pocketing

so they say seeing is believing but after today some of you may not believe your own eyes known as the gentleman thief Apollo Robbins has the art of pickpocketing down to a science literally and today he's lifting the veil on some of his most mesmerizing ruses please welcome Apollo Robbins how are you I'm nervous to let you get too close welcome so I have a confession to make by the way have a seat Apollo all of you in our audience met Apollo earlier today when you checked into our studio for the show he was actually posing as one of our security guards so Apollo tell everyone what you were actually doing I was pertaining to be security as I'd walk along and I was asking them to turn off their cell phones or Bluetooth and as I was doing that I was putting in their pockets or under their watches or inside their jackets really yes and so you're putting these these basically these coins or whatever are these for example can you stand up I'll show you what it looks like really yes so you have this lovely ring I'm not ready for the commitment but you have this beautiful pieces here do you have any pockets on you no I don't think that oh how did you do that well that's rather strange I don't know how that works my pants Apollo excellent this ain't works rather quick you can move these around and hide them on side of people in this case I hid it under your watch you did yes oh that's so funny all right so did you guys let's see in the studio audience how many of you all have those Cady coins that you found on your person how many realize what was going on while he was doing it didn't anybody realize that he was doing it so how are you able to do this without people realizing that you're tucking something in their pocket or their purse or their under their watch in this case it's kind of easy because I'm giving it a task or authority figure we have a tendency to follow what the authority tells us to do but with stealing and trying to distract them a lot more it's a different social contract and becomes much more difficult because you have to divide their attention and manage it you were planting things on people but what you're it real area of expertise is taking things from people we're borrowing borrowing as a pickpocket but tell me I like to say I specialize in future use goods oh so what is what what is your methodology for pickpocketing it's a combination of using their proximity or their personal force field to get inside your space and then also being able to divide up your attentional pie and I try to change their priorities the a great quote says that an occupied mine is missing the present and I think that's really what I took advantage of and and I know that your style of pickpocketing is based on magic versus kind of what would be used by a common thief so how does magic come into play well the magic aspect is that magic traditionally works in a form it's taking advantage of a system of assumptions that you make about reality and I'd try to play with that reality now in this case I can use magic as a narrative if I did a magic trick - now you do magic don't you I not really I heard that you do magic I have one magic trick that's really kind of lame but it's but like a penny a penny go out my down my head and out my mouth can I see it no no no I'll show you later it's not that good this same type of thing though when you're trying to engage someone with a little story or a narrative the magic trick becomes misdirection for while I'm stealing for someone oh ok so I'll tell you the penny trick that I do do you have a penny I have a poker chip okay all right so basically what I do is I go like this I have it go down my head and then I hold it up like this and say it's not in my hands it's not in my mouth and then usually kids like this and then I go and it looks like it's right you've got sort of the same thing that you do or not really yeah or try this have you seen me on video before today no okay great here let me see your hands okay and watch is kind of close now this is kind of simple but if you watch it put your other hand on top now there's a way that I could put this in between your hands without you feeling it so right now it goes inside my hand I'll try it on yours one two three it's inside your hands now that's not there yet but if you look at Bob it falls out of the air that's right back in the hand did you see it go no that was so crazy but you can do that one really yeah but you see that's me measuring your attention and seeing where your sight line is oh so when you look down as your eyes are tracking down I go up and just put it on top of my head oh wow but I have to be responsible to see how you're perceiving it and that's usually something that we don't do in magic we kind of go on autopilot and this requires me to be connected to you as I'm doing it that's amazing why I know that you've got you've got your first gig as a full time magician in Las Vegas yes and you estimate that in four years you picked 81,000 pockets including former President Jimmy Carter's Secret Service agents are you serious how did you do that well my boss had said they're not gonna let you shake Carter's him because they don't want it to get in the news and he said but they didn't say anything about the Secret Service and he changed my role in the show so I found two agents that were off by themselves i stoled one of their belongings their credentials the keys to the motorcade and he didn't want to be the only guy so he said you guys do this the other guys and you've got Jimmy Carter's itinerary right yes yes that is so funny so is that when law enforcement approached you to take help be a consultant to give them some advice on how to deal with people like you yes it trickled in at first it was questions from law enforcement about how different criminal organizations work Colombian diversion teams or there's a group called yaks Yugoslavia obey and Croatian Serbians and they use different techniques of how they steal but then my wife when I met her ten years ago she kind of tapped me on the shoulders it's fun to be entertaining but you could also be relevant you should look at how this applies to deception and attention as a whole and she had this study of psycho biology and she pulled me into the science community and that changed everything oh it's fascinating what a crazy life you've had

Channel: Katie Couric

Views: 358,411

Rating: 4.842617 out of 5

Keywords: Pickpocketing, Apollo Robbins (TV Actor), Katie, Katie Couric (Celebrity), Television (Invention), TV, Talk Show, From TV, Celebrity

Id: ktABbmy6IgQ

Length: 6min 8sec (368 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 10 2014