David Seth Kotkin, pictured above, is the most successful
solo entertainer in history -- his shows have grossed $4 billion over his
forty-plus year career. You've most likely heard of him; his stage name
is David Copperfield, and he's certainly one of the world's best known,
and most recognizable, illusionists.
But not everyone knows who he is or what he looks like. And because of
that, four teenagers likely went to jail.
On April 23, 2006, Copperfield and two assistants were walking back to
their tour bus in West Palm Beach, Florida, after a post-performance
dinner. A car pulled up alongside them and two younger gentlemen got out
of the car. The magician and his entourage didn't think much of it
immediately; as Team Copperfield would say in a statement to People, at first they
thought the teens "were just more people wanting autographs."
But, nope: they wanted more -- money, phones, and anything else of
value that the three had on them. And to drive the demand home, the
muggers had guns pointed at Copperfield and his assistants.
Copperfield's staffers handed over what they had -- a passport, plane
tickets, a cell phone, and cash totaling about $500 and €200.
(Apparently, magician's assistants carry a lot of cash.) But the muggers
weren't so fortunate when it came to Copperfield himself. He, they found,
wasn't carrying anything. He turned his pockets inside out revealing
that they were empty: no cash, no cell phone, not even any forms of
ID.
Well, not really. When the police arrived, they found that Copperfield
had, in fact, been carrying his passport, phone, and wallet. He had
simply used his decades of experience with sleight of hand to hide it all
from the thieves -- or, as he told the press, "call it
reverse-pickpocketing." He had fooled the criminals and saved
himself a few hundred dollars in the process.
Copperfield would later admit that this was a "very
stupid" idea -- it was "a reflex that could have got [him]
shot," all over a bit of what, for him, is certainly a
negligible amount of money. And it turned out to be totally unnecessary,
regardless. Either he or one of his assistants (reports vary) was
able to capture the license plate number of the muggers' car. Using that
information, police were able to identify the four teenagers and charge
them with armed robbery -- and to recover Copperfield's assistants'
stolen items. But, let's give credit where credit is due -- what
Copperfield did was dumb, it was dangerous, but it was very, very
cool.
Bonus
Magic: Magic isn't real, but sleight of hand can have a medical benefit of
sorts. In 1982, Copperfield partnered with a California hospital to teach magic
tricks to patients in hopes of building their self-confidence and self-image.
What the hospital found was that even more was possible. Julie Dunlap, the
hospital's assistant director of occupational therapy, saw some OT benefits
from the manipulation of cards and other objects and built a rehabilitation
program around Copperfield's work. Today, that program is called Project Magic and is accredited by
the American Occupational Therapy Association. Project Magic, per Wikipedia, "is in use in over 1100
hospitals throughout 30 countries worldwide."
From the Archives: Shuffled: If you shuffle a deck of cards, you're
creating a very rare permutation. Like, cosmically rare.
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