With the approach of “Black Friday” and the upcoming Christmas holidays, the Ministry of the Interior once again warns to be especially careful with your luggage and to look out for pickpockets.
Temenuga Dimitrova often travels by public transport and admits that she has been a victim of pickpockets more than once. “It’s happened to me a few times. The one time I managed to catch one. He wanted to take my backpack,” the woman said.
Although a long time ago, Stoyanka Trifonova was among the victims of pickpockets in Varna. “I am trusting. They took the money from my pocket while I was on the bus,” the woman said.
And despite people’s testimonies, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, there has been a decline in pickpocketing. “Since the beginning of the year, only 7 pickpocketings have been registered in ODMVR – Varna, and in almost all of them there have been arrests”, commented Chief Inspector Zivko Kostadinov, head of the “Crimes against property” sector, ODMVR – Varna.
However, police are warning people to be extra careful on buses or in large shops where there are crowds of people.
“The profile of the modern pocketbook is not what was generally accepted 20-30 years ago. Now they are young girls, very good-looking between 16 and 25 years old, who are dressed in branded clothes, make-up very well, smell nice of perfumes, speak correct Bulgarian and in general – modern young people”, said Kostadinov.
Rosen Belishki from the General Directorate of the National Police also commented on the topic in the studio of “Wake Up” on Nova TV.
“There is no boom in pickpocketing in our country. In the National Police, we have good coordination and we constantly receive information from the regional directorates of the Ministry of the Interior. For the first 9 months of this year, there were 427 registered pickpocketings. For comparison, for the same period last year, there were 538. The reason is that a large part of people use bank cards, a significant part of the criminal continent in terms of pickpocketing resides in the countries of Western Europe “, he specified.