How did the "shake down" appoach happen?
We had bought ten or so strings of silver/black cultured pearls from street vendors at Sabang Atlantis. iirc they were maybe $10 each, like that. I put them in my carry-on just for the same reasoning of this thread.
Checked bags? Aint nobody stealing SCUBA gear. Little packages of typically wrapped-up street vendor jewellery ? Why risk it, too easy to pocket. Carry it.
Departure lounge TSA. My wallet set off the magnetometer. The guard pushed it back to me and said, “it’s the credit cards”.
The invasive search station was a female. Largish, bulky, imposing look. As she went through our carry on, she unwrapped what she had certainly seen many times before, the standard paper folded around street jewellery. She had about three of them splayed open when she started going on about how lovely they are, why would i really need to take so many back, that she would really look good in these during the holidays, and she just kept on. And on, and on. She used some phrasing such as, “you really should give me a set…”
I don’t know what i said that told her I wasn’t going to be played. We got passed into the transit louge.
I sat there, not thinking about the attempted shakedown but wondering why for the first time ever in my life that my wallet had set off the alarm.
Then, i remembered that single edge razor blade i always carry in my wallet. I had taken it ORD>SFO>MAN and then got it back thru MAN where i removed it and tossed it in the garbage. So much for security.
They used to pull similar outbound TSA scams in Roatan with batteries. If you looked like you would roll-over, they would simply take your batteries. I have not seen that one in years. Some attributed it to misinterpretation of airline battery rules. Seems to have stopped.
I think security everywhere supplements their income by reselling insect spray that is seized.
