Travelers are routinely warned by experts to keep an eye – or a hand – on their valuables. Sometimes that caution can vanish in the excitement of the moment.
Like at the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy.
An amusing photograph to take at this popular tourist site is one where you position yourself so that it looks like you are holding up the very beautiful, but tipped, historic monument.
It also is a place where the unscrupulous mine for euros. All your attention is on snapping the perfect shot. Your hands are busy, either as a subject keeping the tower from falling over or giving it a final nudge, or as the photographer.
Women plop their purses on the ground to pose for that shot. Men put their backpacks aside.
On the day our group visited, some other tourists had their wallets lifted by swift thieves who have made a study of what people do to get that shot.
What a wonderful picture to show to friends back home, although some wallets could be leaner. If you go to view that awesome tower, be aware. The woman kneeling in the picture is taking the shot the right way.
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My college-student daughter studied in Florence, Italy last fall. 4 of the 16 American students in her program were victims of theft. In my daughter's case, money was stolen from her Wells Fargo bank account through the use of a cloned ATM card.
Two ATM withdrawls were made at ATM machines in Paris the day after my daughter returned to Florence. The thieves had apparently cloned her card, which various websites explain is done by swiping the card through a second card reading device and then manufacturing a card with the captured electronic data. This is common in Europe and the US. To make it work, thieves must also capture the card owner's PIN number, which they can do by secretly videotaping the card owner while she makes a legitimite transaction. We suspect the cloning and videotaping happened when my daughter checked out of a small Paris hotel at dawn on a Sunday, heading to the airport. The illegal ATM withdrawls in Paris occured the next day, Monday, when my daughter was back in Italy.
By law and regulation, banks including Wells Fargo are responsible for electronic theft (unauthorized withdrawls) from bank accounts. When my daughter reported the matter to Wells Fargo's fraud center, the Wells Fargo rep asked my daughter questions appropriate to learn if the card was lost or stolen. My daughter explained repeatedly that she did not lose her card - that a thief must have used a cloned card. The Wells Fargo rep exclaimed "Cloned? Impossible!" and denied the claim. My daughter asked Wells Fargo to get the images of the user using the ATM machines while withdrawing cash from my daughter's account. Wells Fargo refused, something they could have done but did not want to make the effort. After several calls to try to appeal the decision, a Wells Fargo fraud rep told us that to pursue it we must go "outside the bank" - implying, I believe, the need to file a lawsuit.
We are considering filing a lawsuit through the DC small claims court to collect the several hundred dollars that were stolen via two unauthorized ATM withdrawls in Paris on a day when my daughter was in Italy. I welcome any comments from a Wells Fargo rep.