Street robbery with the "cascade" method in Lima

Amigos:

This method ("cascade" or "fall", like in Niagara Falls --don't know why it is called that way!) of robbing has long been known in Perú (I remember hearing, while still being a kid, about this cases) usually victimizing any native or indian guy (poor, candid, innocent) who is visiting Lima for the first time after "coming down" from any high Andean village or town ; the method consists of two or three thieves that, after choosing the best place, leave a notorius pack of money (in shiny bills, like those you have collected from a bankteller sometime) that the newby in the "big city" finds as he walks down any lonely sidewalk (like if someone in a hurry has left there inadvertly); the thieves rely solely on the espontaneous or "natural" desire of anyone of being suddenly the owner of an unexpected pack of fresh money left somewhere). Something like this:

But, (there is always a but in these cases) one of the thieves is walking behind the victim and, after he notices that he has recognized the pack of "bills" and when he is going to pick it up, he loudly shouts: " hey!, I saw it first!!"; inmediatly, the second thief appears in the scene, when the victim and the first thief are already arguing who should take the shinny pack with him (let's assume the package "seems" to contain one hundred dollars in one dollar bills). The second thief "confirms" that the poor victim was the first one to find out the "treasure" and he should be the lucky one; after a few minutes and "only to be fair to both guys arguing", he proposes the victim to keep the package of bills but, he should give the other guy (thief number 1) anything of value he could be carrying in that moment in his pockets (you can imagine: a watch, some coins, bills, jewelry, even his new shoes, anything goes!!); the victim, because he has already "calculated" how many dollars may contain the shinny package, accepts inmediatly and the two thiefs leave the scene with any valuables the victim may had handed away.........., only to find, few seconds later, that only the first two bills of the package were original, .... the rest were blank papers very well cut and packed even better!

This method has several variants as we'll show in coming posts (so don't change the channel then!)

JSR