Why Americans seem like easy marks for thieves abroad

About 10 years ago, in sweet, magical Barcelona, Spain, I was walking down the bustling and heavily touristed La Rambla when about six guys in their late teens or early 20s, clustered on the side of the pedestrian way, hollered something at me.

My Spanish is moderate at best, so I made some marginal attempt to beg their pardon in Spanish, which immediately outed me as an English speaker and possibly as an American.

The six of them sprung up with large smiles, saying in rough English that they wanted a photo with me. They clustered around me as one draped an arm around my shoulder and, curiously, raised his leg onto my lower back. Another did the same from the other side and a couple of them crowded in behind me.

They smiled and oozed enthusiasm, but instinct told me I was about to get my pocket picked. At the risk of upsetting my new Spanish friends, I pushed them away, hard, barked a curt "no" and walked away.

I explained the scenario recently to Robert Siciliano, a personal-security expert, and he agreed that, yes, I was more than likely a target for a theft, albeit good-naturedly. Then again, that's how much of the world's milder forms of crime work: You're goaded into distraction and dropping your guard, then, poof, the wallet is gone.

The good news was that I got away unscathed. The bad news is that Americans make for some of the most convenient crime targets while traveling abroad.

That fact has been accepted as gospel for years, but after noting that my travel-writing colleague Rick Steves stated as much in a recent column, I wondered two things: Are we really such ripe victims and, more important, why?

"We stick out," he said. "We're boisterous in so many awful ways, and that brings unwanted signals. Those signals say, 'Come and get me.' "

Siciliano said our common shortcomings include failure to educate ourselves in languages other than English; not researching local customs and the cities where we travel; wearing clothing that identifies us as foreigners (items bearing English words and baseball caps mostly); and an assumption that it can't happen to us, coupled with an uncertainty about how to react when it does.

"We have a certain arrogance about us that's known worldwide," Siciliano said. "We think we're so smart, and sometimes it's the brightest guy in the room who is the easiest to scam because he thinks he's so smart."

What happened to me in Barcelona was attempted only, he said, because it works, often with Americans. Part of our disadvantage comes from those types of crimes being relatively rare here. Yes, we have more than our share of violence and muggings, but crime rooted in distraction and coordination is less common. That said, Americans living in big cities are more conditioned to be wary of strangers, which might be what helped me in Barcelona.

John Rendeiro, vice president of global security and intelligence for International SOS, said Americans aren't necessarily more vulnerable to crime than other travelers, but we might be at increased risk because we are unaware of how pickpockets and scams tend to work.

Rendeiro said he had his hand on the wallet on the outside of the pants, which was enough to thwart the attempt.

"If my hand hadn't been on it, he would have had it," he said.