A smiley face was painted on the front door. Secret marks of thieves who want to rob an apartment were named by an operative. What they were doing? Uncovered the crime

At this time, a group of people who are scarier than pensioners in line are also activated - apartment thieves. Most of them are drug addicts, homeless and unemployed, but there are real professionals among them.

The greatest danger of thieves is for residents of the capital: here incomes are higher, owners keep more valuables in their homes and often disappear at work. Finding a criminal in this case is almost impossible, since they are most likely burglars.

Residents of other cities should also not relax. Long trips to the sea, to the dacha, to visit relatives endanger your home. Thieves have hundreds of ways in their arsenal to understand if there is an owner in the house and then quickly clean the house. Now let's deal with how villains choose the victim and how not to become one.

Sometimes apartments are opened even by drug addicts and the homeless in search of money for a dose or a bottle. Most often, they do not risk breaking in uninvited, content with booty from the barns and balconies of the first floors, but incidents do happen.

Another thing is professionals who will not climb into ordinary apartments. They are only interested in the property of wealthy citizens. Then they are ready to take risks to snatch a big jackpot.

Usually they work in groups in which roles are strictly distributed. One monitors the potential client, the other draws up a plan, the third deals directly with the theft. The next link is the dealers of stolen goods.

First of all, they assess the financial situation of a potential victim. They look at the presence of air conditioners, satellite dishes, look into the windows. They also refer to solid doors as a sign of the wealth of their owner.

An expensive car is a sure sign of the victim's wealth. Tracking the owner to the apartment is elementary: the observer simply enters the entrance with the person and follows him to the apartment, passing higher so as not to arouse suspicion.

Neighbors may unknowingly help thieves by providing information about the person they are about to rob. Grannies like to discuss the residents of the house on the bench, they notice every purchase. You just have to stand by, pretending to be waiting for someone, and get the information you need.

Oddly enough, even you can bring thieves into the house. Stories to acquaintances about buying new equipment, jewelry, a fur coat for his wife and other things may be of interest to dark personalities. With such information, you need to be extremely careful.

Another danger is social media. We all love to show off our lives by posting photos on Facebook and Instagram. Villains can be added as friends and start studying you. When you start posting pictures from the resort, they will come to visit uninvited.

If the victim is particularly wealthy, then the criminals set up surveillance, which sometimes lasts for weeks. They schedule tenants, looking for a time when no one will be at home.

The usual method of verification is calls under the guise of communal services, social services and representatives of sociological centers. You should be alerted by such unusual activity.

Also, burglars check if a person lives in the apartment by mailbox: if it is full, then no one has been at home for a long time. The absence of the owner is given out by advertising booklets sticking out of the door. The most cunning ones check the readings of the electric meter, if it is on the site.

The villains can set up “beacons”: stick a match, a hair in the door, hang an advertisement or a thread on the handle. If the position of the "beacon" has changed, then the owner was in the home.

These photos were taken by a vigilant guy who saved a neighbor from thieves.

A rug lying in front of the door can easily "substitute" its owner. A cookie can be placed under it, checking if anyone has entered. They can mark the door lock or handle with paint.

How to protect yourself from the prospect of being robbed?

No need to talk about family wealth, do not brag about new purchases. Ask children not to tell friends about their parents' income. Beware if strange calls begin to arrive at the house. In case of a long departure, ask relatives to look after the accommodation. Close windows and curtains before leaving.

The most reliable way to deal with burglaries is still an alarm system. When outsiders break into the house, sensors are triggered and the system sends an alarm signal to the security console. After 10 minutes, a couple of strong guys will come to the apartment to meet the thieves.

Such a system will seem expensive to ordinary citizens, but if there is something to protect, then it is better to play it safe. You can't skimp on safety. As the saying goes, a miser pays twice.

Doodles with chalk or a marker, stickers on mailboxes and doors are not at all pranks of children, this is how criminals signal each other

The thief is watching you

Broken matches stuck in the gap between the door and the jamb, tiny chips, scraps of paper, hair or thread sticking out of the keyhole, and similar methods by which criminals often check whether the residents of the house are there, whether the door opens - this is not even yesterday, but the day before yesterday. Modern burglars have developed a whole system of signs - thieves' marks. They are left by accomplices-gunners who mark the houses and apartments of potential victims. Such signs are left on the front doors, gates, fences, garage doors, mailboxes, walls that are clearly visible from the street, sidewalks and curbs at the entrance to the dwelling. From the outside, they often look like children's scribbles or hieroglyphs - and indeed, children who work as gunners for adult bandits can really draw them. IN different countries thieves' marks are different, each gang may have its own conventional symbol system, but very often they are repeated, there is a certain international "language". Recently, the British police even published a whole list of such marks, urging citizens to be vigilant. And, as it turned out, many signs from the British "Da Pinci code", as it is called in thieves' circles, coincided with or were very similar to those that the criminals left in Germany, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Latin America. For example, a crossed out circle meant that there was nothing of value in the apartment, a cross was a good target, the letter “w” meant that the owners like to leave at night, three parallel lines or a triangle indicated that the house had already been robbed, the Roman “deuce” - there is something profit. There is also a special thieves' "macrame": on gates and fences country houses and summer cottages are tied with multi-colored shoelaces - their color and knots can also tell a lot to an insider about the owners and their well-being.

Black label for hosts

Especially often, thieves' marks appear on the eve of vacation and holiday seasons, as well as weekends, when many people like to leave. The gunner who left a sign for the bandits can be not only strangers like unfamiliar teenagers loitering in the yard or pseudo-workers, but also “their own” - a janitor, a cleaner, a concierge. The latter are even more dangerous, because they know very well where lonely pensioners live, which of the tenants are richer, when someone leaves for work, who went on vacation ... Of course, if in every suspicious case you run to the police in a panic and talk about your suspicions - They will soon advise you to see a psychiatrist. However, it is worth being vigilant: inform the neighbors, the district police officer, and at the same time try to trace the pattern. If it turns out that only the apartments of neighbors who are away are marked, the district police officer must definitely be aware of such suspicions. And, of course, it is desirable to destroy such suspicious signs as soon as possible - to erase and so on. If these were indeed thieves' marks, this could save uninvited guests with criminal tendencies from visiting the home.

Mailbox - a godsend for a thief

According to unofficial information from law enforcement agencies, in Russia and Ukraine burglars in last years especially liked to mark mailboxes. This is understandable: you can quickly find out from them whether the owners are in place, because if the box is full, most likely, the tenants are away. Yes, and leaving secret information on them is much easier than on doors - we traditionally pay less attention to mailboxes, and if children live in the house, signs can always pass for their pampering. They can draw “childish” scribbles on the boxes, mark them with multi-colored stickers like those that are glued on price tags in stores. The “black mark” can also be supposedly advertisements pasted on boxes or doors, especially if they are invisible and stuck in a very strange place.

Last year, strange multi-colored marks on mailboxes that appeared in several districts of Moscow at once alarmed Muscovites so much that it came to the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation. And then different areas were marked differently - the center of the capital - with black dots, residents of eastern Moscow found strange blue checkmarks on their mailboxes, and some mailboxes in houses in the VDNH area were marked with red circles. As a result, the Public Chamber appealed to the Ministry of Internal Affairs with a request to oblige district police officers, together with management companies, to pay attention to the cleanliness of mailboxes. As Anton Tsvetkov, head of the security commission of the Public Chamber of Russia, suggested, these marks could easily indicate the apartments of potential victims. According to him, painting on mailboxes is an old criminal trick. But whether these secret signs gave the necessary information to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and whether a gang of burglars was really operating in the city at that time was not subsequently reported. It is only known that after the hype raised, the district police officers were ordered to be more attentive and promptly respond to all such messages.

As you know, burglary is a very common crime, but it is not always commonplace. Sometimes real criminal virtuosos encroach on the private property of citizens, so Ocean himself and his friends could envy their ingenuity and skill.

Guided by the principle "forewarned - it means forearmed", "MK" figured out what to do to protect his apartment from uninvited guests. What things do modern burglars take out first of all? How are potential victims selected? How is the Internet used? MK answered all these questions ex detective criminal investigation department in one of the district departments of Moscow, Igor GRISHAKOV.

- Igor Nikolaevich, which apartment is the most attractive for a burglar?

Depending on what attacker we are dealing with - a professional or an amateur. With professionals, everything is more or less clear: they steal where they are sure that there is money, they work on a tip. Lonely lovers commit spontaneous burglaries. For example, such a spontaneous thief can be a drug addict who goes for a dose, and he does not have enough money to buy drugs. In my practice, there was a case: a man got up at night to go to the toilet and in the corridor met a lone burglar who chose his apartment by chance, just walked up the stairs and decided to “look into the light” ... While the owner of the apartment was recovering from a meeting with a stranger, he managed to run away.

A "spontaneous" thief will covet the apartment, which is the least protected. Most likely, it will be an apartment on the first floor, with plastic windows(they are easiest to open if there is no additional protection). In the risk zone are also apartments, next to the windows of which there are gas pipe or fire escape: they can easily climb into the home.

- It’s clear with singles, but how do professionals work? How are their roles assigned?

Here everyone really has his own role and area of ​​responsibility. For example, one person in the group must be driving. Such a person brings his accomplices "on business", waits for them, reports potential danger. Two more are directly working on the spot: someone is watching the situation on the floor, the other, a specialist in locks, opens the door. As a rule, no more than two people work in the apartment.

I remember there was a gang of apartment thieves who preferred "odnushki". In such oversized apartments, all the wealth is in one room, so it is much easier and faster to search. Moreover, "odnushka" does not mean that you are poor. In general, for one-room apartment two people are enough.

Do thieves have "standards"? How long can you stay in the apartment? And at what time of the day do they get in most often?

I don’t think that there are “standards” as such, but they are in the apartment for about twenty minutes, no more. As for the time of day, they usually climb during the day when everyone is at work. Let's say the time from 12.00 to 14.00 can be called the peak of burglaries. At this time, everyone who was supposed to leave the house had already left, and had not yet returned for lunch. I remember that cameras were viewed on one apartment theft, which recorded how the thief safely left the apartment - and literally the owner went there for him. Passed by 10 minutes...

- What places in the apartment do thieves comb without fail?

Lone thieves grab whatever comes first. It can be a bag in the corridor, outerwear ... I remember that a woman once applied with a statement from whom such a loner took out the only expensive thing from her house - a fur coat that her children bought for her. Yes, it happens. Thieves also love all kinds of boxes where you usually put jewelry or money, cabinets ... In places such as the kitchen, nursery, bathroom, they operate only if they know for sure: there is something.

- What do burglars most often take out of apartments?

Today, bulky items are stolen less, because it is very difficult to carry them out unnoticed. Let's say a stolen TV that cost 50 thousand rubles can be sold for 5 thousand, no more. What for? After all, you can take gold and turn it in at any jewelry store, where they accept scrap with pleasure and for good money. Therefore, what is in demand today is what can be taken out unnoticed by putting it in your pocket: money, jewelry, expensive gadgets ... The expectation that even if the police "accept" right at the crime scene, the thief can always say that these are his personal savings or things.

- Can citizens determine that thieves are shadowing them?

Theoretically, of course, they can. In practice, as a rule, citizens do not notice this, because these specialists act very carefully. For example, would you be embarrassed by a pizza ad tucked into your front door? That's the majority of citizens - no. And at the same time, this is how thieves test the soil: if the next day the flyer sticks out in the door, it means that the apartment was empty. It’s just that any normal person, entering the house, will definitely throw out unnecessary garbage, right?

The same - with correspondence, perhaps? If there are a lot of letters in the mailbox, it means that no one has been at home for a long time ...

Well, the correspondence trick won't work today. It happens that a month's norm of letters is thrown into mailboxes in a day. And some owners just don't look into them.

In our country, citizens are very fond of showing off new clothes, gifts, sharing vacation plans on social networks ... At first glance, a harmless status - “two days left before the vacation” or “a gift from a beloved husband” - can leave a person penniless in his pocket for the near future. When the Internet was not so widespread, the following scheme worked perfectly: they looked for car ads, called and asked if it was still relevant. If on the other end of the wire they said that the car was sold, this meant that the landlord already had money, while a new car, most likely, had not yet been bought. In general, another victim found ...

- What areas of Moscow are the most unfavorable in terms of burglaries?

Thieves love new areas, and there are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, there are working youth who can afford new housing. So they have money. Secondly, the thieves reason this way: those who bought an apartment in a new area may have set aside the money left after the transaction for a good car. Well, on top of everything else, in new areas, the police are still not so well oriented, there is little prevention. Under such conditions, it is easier for burglars and car thieves to work.

- Can you describe a potential burglar?

As a rule, these are men aged 25–35, of average build. I haven’t seen frankly fat ones - maybe everyone is more or less in shape due to the fact that sometimes you have to flee ... And as for nationality, I probably won’t reveal secrets here: mostly people from Abkhazia and Georgia work in this field .

From time to time, news flashes that this or that celebrity has become a victim of burglars. Recently, the house of singer Vladimir Kuzmin was robbed for 10 million rubles ... Does it make sense to protect their homes, even if such rich people cannot do anything?

Protecting your homes and apartments is a must. Even the sticker front door that the apartment is under guard, or the cheapest camera that costs less than the cell phone that children buy today can save you from uninvited guests. Why would a thief break into a place where he can "light up" when the house is full of apartments without security? At the same time, if a specific task is set, then be sure: they will rob. And none of the most expensive alarm systems will help.

- Won't help even a resident of, say, the prestigious "golden mile" in Moscow?

Home burglaries are a market in which all zones of influence are distributed. Therefore, there are no accidental thefts. This is for you a resident of the "golden mile" - an important person. For a thief, this is a fraerok who has earned a lot of money, and in the criminal world he is worth nothing. Moreover, to enclose the apartment of such an "upstart" is even welcome. If there is an indication, they will climb anywhere. Taboo - only on the apartments of those who support the thieves themselves ...

- How do thieves bypass dozens of security cameras, alarms and concierges in prestigious complexes?

Individual masters can open a lock of any complexity - this is the time. Getting into such a house by deceiving the concierge or security guard is also not a problem. In such houses on the first floors there are all kinds of beauty salons, shops, dentistry, etc. The professionals tell such believable stories that the guards let them through.

- Is it difficult to prove the guilt of a burglar?

The burglary is very difficult to prove. And then thanks to the little things that thieves come across. Once we hired a doorman, a Georgian, who worked alone, mostly climbing into pensioners' apartments. They took it almost from the apartment. But they could not show him anything: irrefutable proof is needed. And here stands a man with a long stick and a knife tied to it. We understand that he needs both a stick and a knife in order to get into the apartments through the windows (he checks with a stick if the window is locked, and cuts through the mosquito net with a knife, if there is one). But prove that the intent was...

- What they were doing? Have you solved the crime?

Yes, they opened it. I remembered that quite recently I had a burglary trip: the victims were grandparents. From the material evidence - practically nothing: a bottle of Georgian wine, which the thief apparently wanted to take away, but changed his mind, and a couple of foreign coins in a flower pot, which the thief dropped when he climbed through the window. I’ll run ahead and say that we didn’t find “fingers” anywhere.

In general, the Georgian was nevertheless escorted to the department, examined him and found in the pocket of his sweatshirt ... a dozen similar coins that I had previously found in a pot. Such a housekeeper-numismatist. I took him into the office and told him that his prints were found on the pot, on the coins and on the bottle of wine, and he had better confess. It was a bluff, but there was nothing left ... By the way, despite the fact that this “numismatist” worked alone, two such reputable lawyers came to pull him out. As a result, he sat down only for this single episode, although in fact there were a lot of them.

- And there were cases when they took with the loot in their hands?

It was so. The guys somehow walked around the hostel and collected everything: a phone, a tablet, a computer ... All this, according to their mental abilities, they handed over to one pawnshop, the owner of which worked with the police. One phone, of course, can be found, but ten is already too much. And it is very difficult to prove this particular type of crime. Basically, the work is built on trifles: here is a coin, here is a car puttied ... Everything is a matter of luck.

- Do organized gangs of burglars have higher support?

I do not presume to say, but in my practice there were very strange things. For example, somehow they accidentally took a gang of apartment thieves, who were caught for a very long time. The operatives knew that the burglars were driving a car with a special sign. And somehow the opera is going to dinner - and they see a familiar car. Naturally, they call the right place, a group leaves, the thieves are detained. And then strange things begin to happen: the car disappears somewhere, cases are transferred with the words, they say, your thefts are solved, the rest will be sorted out higher ... Look: there is a 20-year-old Georgian window operator who is visited by expensive lawyers, here is a serious gang , which is being dumped somewhere ... One can only guess who is in charge of this process.

ADVICE FROM A FORMER OPERATOR

● Keep large sums only in the bank, bank cells. At home, you can keep only a small amount needed at the moment.

● Befriend your neighbors. In old houses, where neighbors have been friends for many years, there are much fewer burglaries. People know each other and perfectly identify strangers in the entrance or near the house. As a rule, in such houses they are not shy about asking unnecessary questions to strangers. Such interest will surely frighten off the swindler.

● If you witness strange and suspicious behavior of a stranger in the stairwell, call the police. You should be alerted if he rings the apartment, looks through the keyholes, lingers at the door. If it is possible to photograph a stranger discreetly - photograph: such information can be very useful.

● When you go on vacation, ask a family member or trusted person to check your place from time to time.

● Install a burglar alarm. If it is already installed, in no case do not neglect its activation.