Italian YouTuber outing pickpockets on the underground

Italian YouTuber Simone Cicalone, has reaffirms his commitment against the increasing problem of pickpockets that infest the Rome metro. 

In 2022, visitors to the Colosseum, Trevi Fountain and Pantheon in Rome, the Duomo di Milano in Milan and the Gallerie degli Uffizi in Florence reported 1,906 times being pickpocketed on travel websites, making Italy the European country with the biggest street theft problem. Statistically, Italy were followed by France, the Netherlands, and despite Barcelona’s reputation, Spain only came 6th on the ranking as being the worst in Europe for pickpockets.

Simone Cicalone is on the Rome underground every day keeping a keen eye out. The train stops at the Colosseum station when he spots a man in shorts and sunglasses sitting among the tourists. ‘Pickpocket!’ He shouts, pointing at the man which causes him to jump up and run off the train with police running after him.

3 quarter of a million followers

Each time, Cicalone travels accompanied by one of his team of 4, videoing each incident, ready to upload the evidence to YouTube at a moment’s notice, where his three-quarters of a million followers are waiting for the next action-packed instalment of this vigilante pickpocket-outer.

According to the former-kickboxer, Cicalone, there’s no shortage of daily material for his YouTube channel. Station staff and locals recognise him immediately and tip him off to where they’ve seen known thieves on the prowl, and their lookouts. He reckons due to the popularity of his YouTube channel, he earns somewhere in the region of €100,000 a year as well as plenty of notoriety as some of his accused become openly violent or, on occasion flee down metro tunnels forcing trains to stop.

Fans and detractors

As well as the fans, he has his detractors: one union accusing him of racism because he appears to target Peruvians and gangs of Roma gypsy girls. He purports to avoid politics, but admits that some of his followers are considered ‘far-right’ and anti-immigration, but in his defence, says he just wants to highlight the dangers of pickpockets on the Rome subway system. Two members of Cicalone’s team include a Peruvian immigrant who says he’s helping because he is sick of the bad name these pickpockets are giving the Peruvian community. And another, a young migrant from the Ivory Coast, who has been the victim of thieves on the trains himself, says it was never this bad when he arrived in Italy ten years ago.

While the hits on his YouTube account mount up, Cicalone is resilient in his mission who says he is doing this for the poor who travel by public transport because they cannot afford to commute by car.