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VOL.CCXVV NO. 73          SHOWBIZ EDITION          TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 1999          LAS VEGAS, NEVADA          2 CENTS
Interview
Business Unusual
What's News
From Pizza to Pickpockets
Not a Cop, Not a Crook; But a Lucrative Career In Pickpocketing
LAS VEGAS, USA?The Tall Swede Journal interviews Professor of Pickpocketry Bob Arno, at his home in Las Vegas.

Tall Swede Journal: What ever inspired you to become a pickpocket?

Bob Arno: I started as an amateur performer in Sweden at age 15 and was a full-blown professional by 18. My specialty was audience participation, stand-up comedy, and a bit of magic that I had learned from books. But my stage persona lacked purpose. Then I saw a French pickpocket performer called Dominique, and suddenly I saw my path. Was I a good pickpocket at age 18?

Continued
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World-Wide
 A hoax speaker at Starlight International recently illustrated the potential for sophisticated corporate comedy. As 10,000 attendees sat down to laptop box lunches in the cavernous Orlando Convention Center, the chef was introduced, to warm applause and outstretched hands. Even after chef Bob Arno reached the stage and displayed the goods he'd grabbed en route, the audience was loathe to let go of the fiction. Bob de-toqued, defrocked, and destroyed the crowd. The standing ovation, as well as the chef, will be seen on Bob's new promo video.
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ITV's London Weekend Television, has completed its exposé documentary, Beware Pickpocket, starring the subject of this newspaper. The hour-long program is expected to kick off a series on dirty deeds, and is scheduled to air June 5 across the UK. Other markets later.

CBS Investigative reporter Joel Grover consulted Professor of Pickpocketry Bob Arno for a segment on crime against tourists. Arno demoed his lightening lifts in the streets of Las Vegas, showing how it happens worldwide.

See TV Article
 Bob Arno, the Swedish Heister.
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Books
 High and Dry on the Streets of Elsewhere is the title of a forthcoming book by Bambi Vincent. Exciting and informative chapters follow the real-life exploits of a couple obsessed with exposing the world's street criminals and their devious distraction techniques.
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Travel
 The Ice Hotel in the North of Sweden was the setting for one of Bob Arno's latest performances. Nordbanken, Sweden's largest commercial bank, chose tables, chairs, even beds of solid ice to impress its 100 attendees.
See Photo
An excerpt from the forthcoming book High and Dry on the Streets of Elsewhere
BY BAMBI VINCENT
It was blistering hot in Naples when Luciano Barattolo was picked up by the police. He'd been lounging on the small strip of lawn under Fontana Nettuno in Piazza Giovanni Bovio. Neptune's Fountain was the only one tall enough to throw shade, and grand enough to blow a cooling mist. It was 10:30 in the morning and Luciano had only nicked a single wallet. Its content, a meager 60,000 lire, was worth less than $35. He'd hoped to get at least twice that amount in order to buy the day's groceries, a few stamps, and put away something for the rent. And there was his partner, too, who gets fifty percent of the take.
Continued
TODAYS CONTENTS
CON TRAILS:
Where the "Con" has been lately
 OPINION:
Corporate Raves		 TWO DOCUMENTARIES:
Both in the can, on Bob Arno		 CONTACT INFO:
Numbers