>Quick story (knowing that "data" is not the plural of "anecdote"): A few years ago, we went on a group trip to Central/East Europe. In Budapest, right by Saint Steven's church, one of our group noticed that her passport was missing. (We'd just arrived in Budapest that day, and hadn't yet been to the hotel, where we could lock things up.) A few minutes, she was approached by a woman who said she'd found the passport and clearly wanted to paid for giving it back. We were pretty sure that the woman (or a confederate) had stolen it in the first place as part of an ongoing scam.
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>I have never had my purse snatched and the only time anyone tried to steal from us outside the US was when we were in Barcelona. I read about this one before we went:

As I think I said elsewhere, I've never had a problem either. But I still recognize that it happens and suspect that it's more likely in tourist areas (where people are likely both to have more money and to be less careful) than elsewhere.

Tamar