Watch out for airport personnel stealing stuff on regional Polish airports.

There have been reports (and I can tell it from my own experience on the Wroclaw airport) that personnel on most Polish airports regularly steal stuff from traveler's suitcases. Travelers taking a flight from Poland to other continents (like America, Africa, or Australia) are most vulnerable to the fraud.

They target electronic equipment, computer parts, video cameras, laptops, etc. They just open suitcases and take what they want. They know the traveler is much less likely to get help / complain from another continent. When they stole my new hard disk and an old video camera, I learned my lesson. But it happened again to TWO of my friends who also took a flight from the Wroclaw airport, through Warsaw, and to the US. I also heard similar stories about travelers going from the Krakow airport to Australia.

Who is responsible for that? Who hires/pays the personnel to work on the airport? I guess they are hired/paid by the airport. Or maybe they are government workers?

Alas, it's not just Poland.

Thiefrow is well named, for instance.


There's also no guarantee that it's not Customs doing this, and not necessarily in Poland.


How do you know that it was the Poles and not somewhere else?

Then again - who puts that kind of stuff in their checked in luggage anyway?

It’s no secret that’s the way US states supplements their income, confiscating private property of unsuspected Polish travelers in the name of homeland security. Check out what State Agency for Surplus Property in your own state to see what they have on sale through EBay in terms of the items and how much money it generates. Of course those are not all the items as the more valuable are split among the personnel that works there. They even boast they have a 98% success of reselling those crappie items to the general American public. I guess everyone in US is an accessory in theft. They freely admit that they’ve been doing it since 2004 on all US airports but each state has jurisdiction over the items confiscated to do with them what they please. What about Chicago O’Hare where Poles are frequent target for their luggage to be search by the custom officers because they will always find items that will be useful for them. I’ve heard plenty of stories from Górals who had their oscypeks' confiscated as supposedly illegal substance they carry on board. Interesting perhaps they should stop selling booze in a duty free shops if you can’t take it with you since that also seem to be the favorite with those custom officers.


Yep, Poles have been asking these very same questions for years now. If it turns out that what you say is true I’ll say good for them, recoup that lost property by any means, preferably employing the very same tactic that US government does.

To be honest I don’t think anyone would want your soiled underwear.

If on the Wroclaw airport the stuff was in the suitcase, but on the Warsaw airport the stuff was missing, then figure.

Lol.
Man, are you ever screwed up.
Nobody has ever stoled anything in the US airports from myself, family or friends. And we travel a lot across the US. We have laptops, ipods, dvd's, ds's and nothing has ever been stolen.

However, in Poland my friends and family were robbed. It's no secret the Poles steal it to supplement their incomes.
And in Ohare, Poles are the ones that are mostly targeted, because they bring illegal stuff with them when they are not suppose to. They lie. They never declare what they have and that's why they have to be searched. When they leave for Poland, they have 10 huge suitcases with them. It's amusing to watch them struggling with all their luggage and they always are crabby, mean looking and pushy. And you always have to watch your luggage in Poland because they are very good and quick at swiping your stuff.

True we had an investigation here in Australia because of such behavior, it turned out that a lot of the people employed to handle the luggage were former prisoners.

If a suitcase or purse in placed in the plane's overhead compartment, it may very well be another passenger who is committing a theft.

A Polish friend of mine flying from Krakow to Paris had hidden some euros in her suitcase , the money was stolen although she had a small lock !

I think Polish Airports subcontracts the luggage management to some private companies and some of their personnel are thieves ( on a short term contract or knowing nothing much can be done against them).

There is the possibility of wrapping your luggage with plastic, this service is offered in any airport and definitely at Balice Airport Krakow.
Passengers with valuable items should have their luggage wrapped as it seems safer for it's a lot of hassle for the Airport Luggage thieves to steal from those luggage.

LOT does the handling at the major Polish airports. FWIW, I've never had anything stolen....and there really isn't much opportunity to steal in Wroclaw as it pretty much goes from the belt to a single room where it's loaded onto the carts bound for the aircraft. They'd have to be pretty bold to rifle through stuff..

Japanese passengers do. They cannot imagine anything they carry in their luggage could be stolen , in Japan you can leave a purse full of cash in the middle of the street and no one will ever take it.....

Well unfortunately this is Polish people all over , they may pretend to be nice be they just can not be trusted with money or property .The Polish postal service is the same in that you can not send anything of value or it will be stolen .I just wish that polish people would stop lying to themselves and attempting to cover up who they really are.My local polish shop has 5 security cameras and its only a very small shop.....................what does that tell you ?..................it tells you that the polish owner is admitting that their own people are thieves and cant be trusted . I think poland should stop scuttling around like jews in the dark stealing things and remember that they were Polish before the jewish invasion in the 1500,s ..................................POLAND ..WHERE IS YOUR POLISH CULTURE ?

AND STOP DOING THE USUAL POLISH (GUILTY) SPECIAL OF POINTING THE FINGER OF BLAME AND SUSPICION AT OTHER COUNTRIES..............................THIS HAD GOT ALOT OF POLES A BROKEN FACE FOR THEIR FINGER POINTING ATTITUDE........................ITS NEVER THEM TO BLAME ALLWAYS SOMEONE ELSE..............................................NO ...NOT ME YOU !

Some feel they have to steal and some feel they can get away with it. The justification likely lies in the perception that the government steals from them through high taxes and other unnecessary fees. Though I can't condone stealing, I understand why they do it. There is definitely a hard-done-by attitude amongst them.

Wolf, that's an observant comment. Now, I get on with many people here but the level of suspicion and pointing the finger at others is highly visible. Any honest Pole will tell you the same and it has nothing to do with being against anyone. It exists in high doses and they always want to catch you out in some way. It stems from dissatisfaction and is endemic.

I always put valuables in my backpack anyway. A Polish advice book recommended that I do the same. I wonder why? ;)

It tells me that Brits can't be trusted?

You'd have to see who came into the shop more, Brits or Poles.

It may be whole nother thread, but I had two packages go missing from the States thanks to (in my opinion) Poczta Polska. However, I think that PP was trying to fight this, because a later package arrived and the next day the local postmaster dropped by to see if we got it.

How do you know it wasn't the Polish Customs stealing it?

Fair point! However, wouldn't there be a declaration or is that me being naive again? ;)

Good point, but it doesn't change the 'fact' that some slimebag pilfered my goods, more than likely in a country that begins with the letter P.

Again - how do you know that it even happened in Poland?

Stuff can be routed through different airports, different places - you've got no idea where it went missing.

But the proximate cause might be easy to find ;)

You know where it's missing in Poland when the tracking number ends up somewhere in poland.

BS. Last time I was in Chicago staying there for 3 months I ordered 3 cartons of cigarettes of the Indian reservation in US, needless to say package never arrived I wonder if that also had something to do with Polish Post Office. Last time I’ve checked USPS has a monopoly there, Not sure though it could have been sand through UPS or FedEx as well, still no relation to Poland yet the package disappeared, go figure. I’ll bet it was a country starting with U.

The worse types of thefts are from building sites, bricks, cement, anything not pinned down is gone the next day. oops the worst theft is the stealing of toilet paper at hotels etc..

Yeah you're right Thug. When I used to go home in the summers to the States, I always found stuff that pissed me off too. It's easy when you live in a foreign place to slip into that mentality of thinking that the locals are somehow bad or stupid, when in fact people are just people. I need to give Poland a break. I had a lot of good times; hell I got married and had two kids there.

I'm a USPS employee. Our monopoly is very strict. Thiefs get arrested and it is taken seriously. Larger cities, like Chicago has lazy Blacks, Poles and Mexicans working there. But unlike in Poland, who just let stealing go by, stealing mail in the US is a federal crime.

It can be a federal crime all you want, but when you have situations like this -

getsatisfaction.com/usps/topics/usps_calls_customers_liars_if_they_report_a_lost_package

pull the other leg, sunshine.

Looks like stealing mail is acceptable in the United States too.

(we don't talk about how the USPS sponsored a certain cycling team with a certain Mr Armstrong as leader)

It's also against the USPS rules of conduct to make disparaging comments about minorities. Just don't go postal on me.\

People still do it, but they get caught.

But I have heard the mail isnt safe in Poland. so I try to not send fancy looking items to my
cousins when I do.

I have heard that in Moscow on Red Square they give cars away.Now seriously, last year I mailed from US to Poland to 3 different adresses but in the same town 3 big and I mean big packages full of brand new designer clothes Hilfiger,CK and so on.I declared each package worth $200 (maximum value of gifts) even though the value of stuff in prices I bought it for was about $500 each package.Of course I teared off all the prices and stuff indicating that these clothes are new.EVERYTHING arrived within 8 days,nothing was missing and none of packages was ever opened.Now, I had 1 bad experience in 2009 when my package also full of designer stuff arrived after like 40 or so days and even though nothing was missing the package was opened but the worst thing was that everything inside was wet and molded.I don't know what happened to that package and nobody could explain it to me here nor to my bro in PL.Here is an advice, if you ever mail package like that pack all the stuff inside additionally in plastic bags,that's what I do now.

That's my experience with mailing stuff from US to PL.On a side note, it has become bloody expensive to mail stuff from US to PL,it has cost me about $240 to mail these 3 packages.

Bigger packages are easy to see people stealing.. smaller items arent.

they do it here, I know they do there.. because people do stupid crap.

like I said I dont draw attention to the package.. its plain or I just send a regular envelope.

and hope that Anyone who has sticky fingers here or there will get caught.

:)