h/t Zero
While this is probably an EDC item in NYFC, a Drop Wallet, AKA "Mugger Wallet", is a handy piece of gear to carry in urban areas, while travelling, or any time you feel the need, and per recent discussions over at Commander Zero's's blog, something not everyone has heard of.
The idea is to have a plausible wallet you can fork over, ideally by dropping or tossing, when getting stuck up for your wallet and other items on your person.
1) Get a decent wallet.
2) Load it up. Some people advocate a few real bills, . Personally, the amount of real money I'm prepared to hand over is $0, but you do you.
You can obtain, for $10 + shipping, a dozen cinematic US bills, totalling $372, 2@ of $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100, all used in motion pictures (and clearly marked as such), from BezosMart. I'd rather do that, and salt it with enough to be convincing.
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| Looks real. Totally fake. Look closer. |
Fake cash only gets you part of the way home though.
3) Lard the card slots up. How?
Grab a mittful of gift cards the next time you pass a rack of same at the store.
Cost: $0. Actual value: $0. Decoy value: Priceless. Make especially sure to get a couple with the VISA and Mastercard logos, and place them prominently up front.
A few higher-end merchant gift cards won't go amiss to pad the section.
4) Some people will tell you to put old picture IDs or driver's licenses in there too.
BAD idea. a) Why give someone a handle on your real identity? b) And BTW, if they have an old address on you, they can cyber-stalk you to your true address now for a little payback, for a few dollars. Why make that easy for them?
Instead, work a little harder. Get any number of fake I.D.s, again from online sellers (I'm talking the ones you can buy and have without doing 5 years in the pen, not teenager fake IDs, which if you buy online, you'll send the money, and never see the money nor the ID ever again.)
Try these instead.
Find a state that works for you. Then rework them with a fake name and address, change the details, and put in an old photo of yourself. Copy that in color and laminate it (FedEx/Kinko's is your friend here). In fact, make 5-10 copies, so you don't have to do all this again after you toss the first wallet. You want to be Fred Flintstone, Kelly Green, or Bob Sledder? Knock yourself out.
5) Throw in some random business cards and miscellaneous crap.
Need family pictures? They sell those too. Go to any store with photo frames, and find some shots of "your" kids, wife, husband, girl/boy friend, etc. Photocopy to size, cut to fit, and now Bob is literally your uncle.
Carry the fake wallet for a while to break it in, wear and tear it, etc.
When it comes to every day carry, obviously, put it in a different pocket than your actual wallet.
Maybe put the fake in your hip pocket, and hide the real one somewhere else.
When need presents itself, hand it over, drop it, or even toss it, to create distraction, giving you the chance to beat feet, create a little more space between you and Mr. Robber, or misdirect them long enough for more active measures.
Dealer's choice there.
Bonus points:
A) Leave another one in your house, 24/7, especially when you're away/out of town. Ideally, right in front of that hidden 4K color nightvision camera, so you and the cops get a great look at the burglar who lifts it.
B) Put one of the new small GPS tags in it. Not so much to find the bad guy (though if they oblige by taking it all the way home, so much the better), but to give the detectives a great trace of the route the thief took, hopefully past some other people's surveillance cameras (Ring, traffic cams, etc.) on the way to wherever they dump it.
If you want to put OC powder, UV dye, or itching powder on the bills and such, we won't tell.
C) Given the price of cell phones, carrying an old dead one (or better yet, a really cheap crappy burner phone that was never activated, traceable to no one) to fork over, and keeping your actual one more concealed isn't a horrible idea either.
At any rate, you now have options that don't include getting robbed of anything beyond an old wallet, some movie props, and a junk flip phone, and giving any would-be stick-up folks a reason to split with the goods rather than hang around and screw with you, without giving them anything that would lead them back to you, and might lead the po-po to them.
Win-win.
Do what seems best to you.
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