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.
17 comments:
I know a few people that have a gun business. in the store, right on the shelf in the display case, is a fake gold coin in a large box. it's glued down into the box, so if you want it, you have to take the whole thing.
underneath the coin, also glued in, is an apple airtag. when the box sits in the display case, it sits on one of those wireless charging pads.
other shops have been smash-and-grabbed with stolen tow trucks..they run the truck right through the front of the business, and grab whole gun safes, ripping them right out of the walls and floors.
the theory is..someone doing that would pocket the coin, box and all, and figure they'll extract the coin from the box later.
then using the airtag, track the coin to the person who did the robbery.
Great idea except the part where you expect a "detective" or some other type of cop to assist you in finding the bad guy. I doubt they'd "waste" their time assisting you for what they'd figure is too minor to chase down
Get the wallet from a thrift store. Broken-in already.
Fake wallet...OR small caliber weapon, and a shot to the face. Call the police. Maybe.
I love you for your mind!! How sneaky, deceitful, and outright snarky. I'm tempted to be "Marilynn Munroe" but I will probably go whole hog and be "Grace Corleone Kelly" and own it. Might as well get used to a new identity in this new world order.
You genius you!!
Thanks for the great ideas.
If one is the type that suits are std fare, get what is called a travel billfold as your keeper. They are tall but thin so fairly easy to conceal inside the coat.
Excellent. More of these, please.
@Anon 6:20A:
You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
If you can do your part and hand a detective a lay-up, that lets him potentially crack 40 other cold cases, expect them to take the shot.
@Anon 9:29A
Carrying one doesn't preclude the other.
Which one you deploy, and/or in which order, is a personal decision.
I can just see Office Friendly pulling me over, yanking me out of the car and finding a drop wallet full of "counterfit bills". Greybar hotel for me!
Naw, I can leave $20 of singles in there, like mine already has.
Old school, but it will still work! We used to salt them with real dollars. I 'think' it was $10 in ones, and a blank check.
@markshere2:
I gently suggest you follow the caption advice, embiggen the pic of those absolutely-not-counterfeit bills, and take a hard look at all of them.
Any Officer Stevie Wonder who arrested you for a wallet full of those would be laughed off the police force about 6 months before your six figure false arrest settlement check arrived, if he wasn't beaten to death by the desk sergeant at the station first.
It would be nice if you could have a small radio detonator in your drop wallet. About 1/2oz of Semtex.
Such fun......almost like Hamas pagers........
What if what they want is your life?
I love the smirks they added to the presidents on the bills.
Though that old rake Franklin looks entirely in character.
@Anon 12:06P
If you're asking that seriously, you're not tall enough for the internet.
"If somebody tries to kill you, you kill 'em right back." -Captain Mal Reynolds' rules for life
I don't think the fake I.D.s should have a real photograph of you, but rather a photograph somewhat resembling you but not you. This is to avoid the frustrated thief performing an online image search to determine your real identity.
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