![]() Robbins brandished a copy of Carter’s itinerary, and when an agent snatched it back he said, “You don’t have the authorization to see that!” When the agent felt for his badge, Robbins produced it and handed it back. Within a few minutes, he had emptied the agents’ pockets of pretty much everything but their guns. While Carter was at dinner, Robbins struck up a conversation with several of his Secret Service men. He is probably best known for an encounter with Jimmy Carter’s Secret Service detail in 2001. star: wad of cash) and business (Ace Greenberg, former chairman of Bear Stearns: Patek Philippe watch). In more than a decade as a full-time entertainer, Robbins has taken (and returned) a lot of stuff, including items from well-known figures in the worlds of entertainment (Jennifer Garner, actress: engagement ring) sports (Charles Barkley, former N.B.A. “Am I being paid enough to give it back?” “You have to ask yourself one question,” he often says as he holds up a wallet or a watch that he has just swiped. One senses that he would prosper on the other side of the law. Robbins works smoothly and invisibly, with a diffident charm that belies his talent for larceny. Among his peers, he is widely considered the best in the world at what he does, which is taking things from people’s jackets, pants, purses, wrists, fingers, and necks, then returning them in amusing and mind-boggling ways. Robbins, who is thirty-eight and lives in Las Vegas, is a peculiar variety-arts hybrid, known in the trade as a theatrical pickpocket. Robbins held up a thin, cylindrical object: the cartridge from Jillette’s pen. Jillette removed his ring, put it down on the paper, unclipped a pen from his shirt, and leaned forward, preparing to draw. He instructed Jillette to place a ring that he was wearing on a piece of paper and trace its outline with a pen. “Steal something from me.”Īgain, Robbins begged off, but he offered to do a trick instead. He pointed out that, since Jillette was wearing only shorts and a sports shirt, he wouldn’t have much to work with. Robbins demurred, claiming that he felt uncomfortable working in front of other magicians. Jillette, who ranks pickpockets, he says, “a few notches below hypnotists on the show-biz totem pole,” was holding court at a table of colleagues, and he asked Robbins for a demonstration, ready to be unimpressed. A few years ago, at a Las Vegas convention for magicians, Penn Jillette, of the act Penn and Teller, was introduced to a soft-spoken young man named Apollo Robbins, who has a reputation as a pickpocket of almost supernatural ability. ![]()
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