Our exciting Paris experience
 

Having returned recently from Europe, one of the biggest highlights was in France that I would like to share with you.<BR>My bother and sister-in-law accompanied us for the first part of our trip to Paris and we decided to visit the Sacre Coeur. After that visit we took the Metro back to our hotel which involved a transfer at the Pigalle station.<BR><BR>Upon boarding at Pigalle, two young females distracted my sister-in-law pretending ignorance while pointing to the stop diagram over the door. My wife immediately shouted, “MARY, SHE’S IN YOUR PURSE!”<BR><BR>The gal passed the money to her cohort who proceeded to stuff it into her low cut blouse.<BR>Mary, then reached into the gal’s blouse and retrieved her money—Just then, the warning horn sounded- regarding the door closures- and they immediately bolted off the train a fraction of a second before the doors closed. <BR><BR>When we reached our destination, Mary checked her nearly stolen money and discovered that she not only recovered her money, but there were also 5 - $20 bills and a 10 Euro note.<BR><BR>We used that money that evening for a fine meal in Paris and drank a toast to the poor person that lost the money knowing fully, had he/she known how the money was spent, would have joined us in that toast.<BR>

I enjoyed your story, Bill. The image of Mary reaching into the blouse of the thief to retrieve the money is too much! Glad she got the money back and that of other victims without getting hurt. Your hearts were in the right place with your toast, but it is unfortunate that things like this happen in the first place.

ttt

Good for your wife, Bill! I felt the same joy when I slapped the hand of a young woman from my friend's purse in an elevator in Monaco. It just feels good to defeat their con game.

Gee, I did that and I got my face slapped. OK, so she wasn't a pickpocket.

"We used that money that evening for a fine meal in Paris and drank a toast to the poor person that lost the money knowing fully, had he/she known how the money was spent, would have joined us in that toast."<BR><BR>Huh? Am I the only one here would wouldn't enjoy food or wine purchased with money stolen from another person?<BR><BR>

I'm wondering why Mary had cash so easily accessible in her purse, especially in a metro car???

Yes, that is true, other Nancy. I enjoyed the slap but I wouldn't have enjoyed using someone else's stolen money for dinner. Maybe I would have given it to a church, if she would have given it to a beggar, it might have been one of the thieving girl's relatives!

Don't know, Nancy... But personnally I would like my stolen money to be used for a fine meal by a more fortunate potential victim (and I would like it vastly more than thinking the money would be spent by the thief).<BR><BR>The only better use I can think of for stolen money in such a situation would be to give it to a charity.

I hope they reported this incident to police before they went and used someone else's money for dinner. I think donating the money would have been a nice idea. I would have felt better than to brag about the winfall on a forum.

It would have been just my luck that as I stuck my hand in to retrieve my money, someone would have arrested ME for robbing HER!<BR>And I too agree, if you got your money back, that is cause for satisfaction, but not to spend her stolen money on your meal. That is a little low.<BR>

Good show Bill. You wife is gutsy. Forget the guilt trip. It wasn't a low thing to do. I am sure the meal was enjoyable and obvioulsly you and yours saw nothing wrong with it. Morals are set by society and generally most folks would approve. <BR>Folks enjoy the story and do not get wrapped up in passing judgement on Bill who was sharing ans experience. If you want to give your gains from a robery to charity then so be it. <BR>I too join join Bill and his family in the toast.

There will always be people who will justify their actions like this. <BR>It does not mean that they are right or that others who disagree are wrong.<BR>Just that there are two kinds of people here - Bill and the Gypsies,<BR> and the others who would not buy dinner with stolen money.

Okay, enough with the self-righteousness, people. This poor guy was just relating a story and you jump all over him. How many of you would come across a 20 dollar bill on the sidewalk and drop it off at a police station, "Officer, I found this money, see that it finds its owner, please." The officer would laugh in your face.<BR>Or better yet, how many would take that same 20 dollar bill and drop it at the nearest charity? Chances are you'd think, "hey it's my lucky day," and your wallet would have $20 more than it did to begin the day.<BR>Cash has no legal title because there is no way to identify it to a particular person. It's freely transferable, finders keepers.<BR>It's not like he found a wallet with identifying information and used someone's credit cards or cash from a wallet. In that case, it would arguably be wrong. So leave him alone and get off of your soapboxes!

Right, I wouldnt give it to the police station, but charity. It would make me feel better about myself to know that the money ended up not with two thieves or with me but with a real charity. It would put a stop to the chain of dishonesty.

But, if you insist on giving it to charity, then why not just let the thieves keep it? I mean after all they are just trying to make a living and feed their poor little starving babies. The poor girls are poor and have no way to buy food so they are forced to steal. We should have pity on them. In fact, when we are in Paris we should walk around looking for them and make sure that we give each of them some money. That would be the Christian thing to do wouldn't it? Help those poor girls and feed their starving babies. God, I feel so sorry for them and you had to go and STEAL her money from between her boobs. How do you know that the money you took was not her weekly pay for cleaning the toilets at the Louvre? You should be ashamed of yourself picking on those poor girls.

Those Gypsies make money every day off of people, they are not poor. They do very well.<BR> If you FIND money, that is luck, you didn't grab it off of someone.<BR> This is just a case of honesty-and how people arrange it to suit themselves. And Mr/Mrs Givehimabreak-you are right there in the same class, defending someones spending stolen money on themselves and bragging about it.

Bill's wife UNKNOWINGLY grabbed additional money that was stolen by this thief. There's no difference had she found the money on a sidewalk. If Bill and his wife wanted to donate the extra money, yes, that's a nice gesture, but they chose not to. It's their personal decision. It easy to be on the sidelines and judge and criticize others' actions, but I'd be surprised if it had happened to those that are doing the criticizing, how many of them would donate this extra money.

Bill, I couldn't help chuckling at your story. However, bear in mind that there could have been a THIRD accomplice around - a 7 foot, 300 pound gorilla of a guy, in which case things might have turned out differently. <BR><BR>The responses to your post are most interesting. It's true that you made an assumption about the extra money as being stolen, when it might have actually constituted legitimately gotten gain on the part of Ms Low Neck Blouse. I know, seems unlikely, but it is a possibility. As an earlier poster said, cash has no legal title unless the last owner somehow managed to legally record the numbers somewhere (the way banks do in ransom cases.)<BR><BR>The responses suggesting you should have given the money to charity are most interesting. Charities are not (I hope) in the money laundering business, such that anything donated to them magically erases the nature by which the money was procured. Probably some people might FEEL better about donating the money to charity, but it doesn't change the facts of the case.<BR><BR>This was an accidental theft that occurred when the 'thief' was trying to act in her own defense. Had Mary seriously injured the thief in the process, things would have become more complicated. As it is, I don't see Mary and her friends becoming career felons as a result of this incident. Case dismissed.

I'll stick my neck out and use a real name, unlike the self-righteous, preachy but anonymous posters (when it comes to morality, they're all hat and no cattle). Bill, it would have been nice to donate the extra money to charity but I certainly don't look down on you for what you did. And kudos for getting your money back!<BR>A few years ago, before we moved to Europe, my husband interviewed for a job with a Belgian company. He paid for the flight and they reimbursed him later. The flight cost about 25000 Belgian francs (about $675 at the time) but when the company made the bank transfer, they deposited 25,000 DOLLARS into our account. Could we have used the money? Lord, yes! And the company's accountants were so bad (in every sense of the word), they most likely would never have noticed (more about that below). But good citizens that we were, we reported the mistake immediately and arranged for the prompt return of the $24,325. <BR>A few years later, we found out from people who had worked at the company (now bankrupt) that it was run by a bunch of thieves. The company was deducting taxes from employees it had never paid to the government, deducting life insurance payments months after secretly canceling the policies, deducting car insurance contributions but secretly not paying insurance on company cars (fortunately, nobody had an accident), all the while the CEO was taking home $20,000 a MONTH (chump change by Enron standards but this was a fairly small company).<BR>Over many a Belgian beer, we have wished we had a time machine and could have gone back to the day when we found the $25,000 in our bank account. On a do-over, would we really have kept it? Probably not. But maybe we should have and shared it out with the fleeced employees--a far better use of the money than returning it to the corrupt corporate management.<BR>At any rate, congratulations on catching those thieves in the act.