Fake POLICE!!! and other Rome, Italy Warning Or Danger Tips

Step 1: A man approached us asking for directions to the "Colosseo". I didn't speak Italian and told him so.
Step 2: A second man (well-dressed in a suit) appears about a minute later and shows us his POLICE ID, and asks for our passports. (What he doesn't know is that we'd been warned about this modus operandi...)
Step 3: He's jabbering away in Italian to someone else who just turns out to be the first man who'd asked us for directions (thereby confirming we were tourists). Then we are interrogated as follows, "U speak English? Good! do you know this man? You were talking to him... was he trying to sell u drugs? This area is where deals take place, so I have to check your documents and money"... More jabbering in Italian, and the first guy shows the plainsclothed "cop" his documents and money which are promptly checked and returned to him.
Step 4: The "cop" asks us for our documents and money so he can CHECK them!!!
(When it's happening, it's so smooth and so fast, that my brother was actually going to hand over his things to the guy. I actually yelled at him not to and told the "cop", "We don;t have our passports with us, but we just shopped at the UPIM store (a large department store), so if you wish we will come there with you and you can check the cash we paid there."
What freaked me out was how fast the guy's intimidating tone changed. He said it was ok and actually SHOOK HANDS WITH US before the two of them disappeared. We were left stunned and thanking our stars we'd bbeen warned that this could happen.
In retrospect, it seems so easy to figure out that it's a con-game, but at that moment, u tend to think "Drugs? no way!! here, take and check my papers, money etc. It's all in order..." No prizes for guessing that the money wouldn't be returned...
The sheer brazenness of these people scared me, esp. since it was in broad daylight with so many people around. Luckily for me, it was really my first day and I was 10 times as careful afterwards...

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ALWAYS, use a money belt in Rome/Italy.
Thieves could be gypsies/beggars, or just people on scooters, escalators (going in the opposite direction, they grab your bags) or even just plain railway employees... I had a "biglietto settimanale" (weekly ticket) and had stamped it on my first journey. The next day, I was checked, and was told my ticket wasn't valid! The conversation was not in English so I couldn't really undersatand what the problem was, he pointed to the date on the ticket and I pointed to where it said weekly ticket. So the guy smiled and let me go... but come on, he knew all the while the ticket was valid! (I must also add that once in a night train I fought like mad, again without undersatnding what theticket-checker was actually saying, he kept insisting in Italian that we move from our seats. Since i knew I was in the correct seat, I kept refusing, but finally we moved ( I was determined to kick up the biggest racket this side of a football hooligan going berserk if anyone asked me to pay a fine later), and all the poor man was doing was moving a bunch of students to the empty first class compartment where we could sleep comfortably...!!! so, some of them are nice, but hey, it can't hurt to be too careful!

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