“Dear PoPville,
[Thursday] I was pick pocked at Emissary on P st at 3pm.
I went to Emissary to meet a colleague for an afternoon coffee. After ordering at the counter, we sat in the back room inside near the bar. It was a busy afternoon with the usual crowd of people working silently on laptops at every table. My colleague and I sat at a two top table in the middle of the room. I placed my large bag on the back of my seat (ready for someone in the comments to tell me I was asking for it). We were deep in conversation when I noticed someone bump into my bag, at that point one of the handles had slipped off the chair and it was wide open. The woman behind me apologized for bumping into me, I said no worries and was not at all suspicious. I picked my bag up and placed it by my feet as she was very close behind me and I wanted to make sure my bag was not blocking her way in getting by. At that point I looked down and confirmed that my phone was still in my bag, and everything else looked normal so I didn’t think twice. The woman who bumped my bag exited Emissary with her partner soon after. It was about 30 minutes later when I got an alert for a $813 charge at Safeway on Wisconsin this was followed by a text asking if it was fraud from Capital One, followed by another text from Chase asking if it was fraud. I was able to block both, and looked into my wallet to notice all three of my credit cards were gone. My id, phone, air pods, all still in place just my credit cards missing.
There were two pickpockters
– a man and a woman, slim, black, in their 40s who came into the shop with a McDonalds bag and did not order any coffee. As mentioned, the woman apologized when she bumped into me – they were also polite. I did not interact with the man, but the two women who were sitting on their laptops next to us said he approached them and asked them any good pizza spots in the area – making me think that these two frequent coffee shops and collect as many credit cards as possible before leaving. My colleague was sitting facing my bag and the two pickpocketers and did not notice anything beyond their suspicious behaviour of coming in and leaving without ordering anything.
I was able to block the $813 transaction, but the culprits did get away with a $430 charge at Safeway which I have already reported and requested replacements for. Big thanks to the manager and innocent bystanders at Emissary for their concerns and taking immediate action to try and see if she had any video footage to share with the police. I wanted to make sure the community was alert, and remind everyone to turn on their credit card charge notifications and to maybe be a bit more suspicious than I was if someone is bumping into your wide open bag!”