Woman victimized by pickpocket duo

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Updated: November 21, 2011 10:28AM

The woman stopped on the way to work for her usual morning fix — a medium skim cappuccino — and was hustling back out through the lobby of the Loop office building where the coffee shop is located when she noticed a man getting ready to exit through the revolving door ahead of her.

There was no missing him: 6-foot-2, 220 to 230 pounds, wearing a mustard-colored suit and hobbling on crutches.

The woman figured the guy might have trouble with the revolving door, so she hung back, then entered the door herself when it appeared he was safely through — just as it came to a crashing halt.

Up ahead of her, the guy on crutches started hollering, indicating the door was stuck.

“Push the door. Push the door,” he yelled.

She pushed, but the door wouldn’t budge.

“Push. Push up high. It’s blocked on top,” said a helpful man who stepped into the door from behind her to assist.

The woman did as she was asked, reaching up with her right arm over which she’d slung her purse while her left hand clutched the coffee cup and a laptop case.

Just about then the guy on crutches made it out the door, which suddenly swung free again, as a big wad of paper napkins from the coffee shop fell to the ground.

The woman remembers thinking at the time the napkins were strange, just as she thought it was weird the guy on crutches couldn’t get out the door when it looked to her like he had plenty of room.

But she was flustered because he was still hollering, and she needed to get to work, so it was only later through hindsight she realized what you may already have figured out.

In fact, it was two hours later when she listened to her phone messages, one in particular catching her attention — from Bank of America’s fraud detection unit.

“We’ve detected unusual activity on your account,” the message said. “Please call.”

Even then, the woman was not alarmed, believing the call had something to do with travel arrangements she’d recently made.

She reached in her purse for her wallet to retrieve the credit card, and that’s when reality struck. The wallet was gone.

The previously fuzzy picture came quickly into focus: the man on crutches “stuck” in the door, the other man who’d come from behind to “help” her push. Pickpockets!

The woman felt really stupid about falling for the old revolving-door trick, but there wasn’t time for self-recriminations.

She returned the bank’s call, which asked if she was trying to use her card to make purchases at Wal-Mart and Target. She explained her belief she’d been pickpocketed.

She would go on to learn the thieves had moved quickly, but cautiously.

Within an hour of the revolving door incident, somebody was using her company credit card to make a $13 purchase at a Bed Bath & Beyond — probably as a test to see if she had canceled her credit cards.

A few minutes later they were trying to charge $1,000 in merchandise at a South Side Wal-Mart, where the charge was declined by the credit card computers, which somehow detected an anomaly. About an hour later, they tried to make a $225 charge at Target, which also was rejected.

The woman took mental inventory of what else of importance had been in her wallet: one personal credit card, one bank debit card and her driver’s license.

When she checked on the other cards, the story was much the same: small purchases at Bed Bath & Beyond followed by attempted larger purchases at Wal-Mart and Target — the main difference being the personal credit card had approved the charges.

At lunch she went to the security desk of the building where she’d been pick-pocketed and asked about the guy on crutches.

“Oh, you mean the guy in the mustard colored suit who was sticking napkins in the door to block it,” the guard said helpfully, but had no interest in checking security cameras.

Police were similarly disinterested. An officer on the street told her to call 311. A dispatcher at 311 told her to gather more details about the charges and call another number to make a police report. The person taking the police report didn’t want those details, nor a description of the suspects, explaining: “That would be part of the follow-up investigation, if there is one.”

This is just another cautionary tale of life in the big city, the sort of thing that happens every day, which didn’t keep the woman from tossing and turning all night rethinking her mistakes — such as failing to put her wallet in the zippered pocket of her purse.

Be more careful the next time, suggested her less than helpful husband, who thought he at least might keep it from happening to somebody else by writing this column.