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Comment by sounddust | Hacker News Reader

This always seemed like a horrible idea to me. What happens if you hand over your fake wallet and the mugger decides to search you and find your real one? You will have seriously pissed off the mugger and will be more likely to be roughed up or killed than if you had complied.

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If you hand over a wallet with a reasonable amount of cash in it that appears to be a used wallet, why are they going to decide it's a fake? How many people really carry one?

I'm not saying they will think it's a fake upon seeing it. To give you an example:

* A mugger asks you to hand over all your goods.

* You hand him your fake wallet and cell phone.

* He decides to reach in your pockets to see if you're hiding anything else (maybe an iPod or something else).

* He finds your real wallet and now is aware that you tried to hide it.

* He gets angry and shoots you (whereas otherwise, he would have just run off with your stuff).

Is a slightly increased chance of getting beaten or killed really worth the difference in cash between the real and fake wallet? I think it's smarter to just prepare for the possibility of a lost/stolen wallet and know how to quickly cancel your cards and apply for new ones.

The advice I've seen on fake wallets is to toss the wallet one way and run the other, hoping that the money is more attractive than revenge for a petty slight (and, let's face it, if he's going to take the time to kill you when there's a wallet with cash in it in easy reach, he was probably going to anyway).

Do muggers generally search their victims? I would imagine that they'd want to avoid getting too close, to avoid getting into an actual physical confrontation.

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